


Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand

by Philosopher_King



Series: Chaos Avatar Zuko [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Burn treatment, Burns, Canonical Child Abuse, Eventual Chaos Avatar Zuko, Gen, Hurt Zuko (Avatar), Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Medical Inaccuracies, Narcotics, Opium, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, References to Suicide, This is just the prologue, Vomiting, Zuko (Avatar) whump, Zuko's Scar (Avatar), medical drug use, probably, what have i gotten myself into?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24295465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: "Iroh looked away when Ozai put a hand to his son’s face—but even as he did, he swore that he would never look away from Zuko again."After the (so-called) Agni Kai, Iroh helps the palace doctors care for his grievously injured nephew, resolves to accompany Zuko into exile, and makes a bargain.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Chaos Avatar Zuko [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1753936
Comments: 283
Kudos: 1160





	1. After the Agni Kai (Day 1)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The One Where Zuko's Hair Matches Sokka's and Other Tales](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21632206) by [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance). 



> This started with me looking up some information about burns and burn treatment to try to figure out how bad Zuko's injury probably was and what would have happened in the immediate aftermath of the Agni Kai. Then stuff happened and it ended up as a prelude to a Chaos Avatar Zuko AU inspired by MuffinLance's discussions thereof and more specifically by AvocadoLove's take on the idea, [Consider the Wildflowers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22050730/chapters/52625371). The philosophical possibilities are so juicy I'm already salivating.
> 
> Sorry about the references to an English folk song (including the title); most of my cultural reference points are European. A reader did suggest a Chinese myth about futility analogous to Sisyphus, which is now included.

Iroh looked away when Ozai put a hand to his son’s face—but even as he did, he swore that he would never look away from Zuko again.

He turned back to look once the roar of fire had ceased and Zuko’s agonized scream had faded to whimpering sobs. He saw only Ozai’s back as he left the Agni Kai chamber: he did not see the expression on his brother’s face when he had maimed his son or when he beheld the damage he had done; he did not know precisely how many seconds Ozai had stayed to admire his gruesome handiwork. Had he looked triumphant? smug? regretful? Iroh could find out by asking other eyewitnesses, but he found that he did not want to know.

There was a doctor present, as there was at every Agni Kai. As soon as Ozai had left the combat floor, the palace doctor rushed to the side of the child who knelt, panting and sobbing, where his father had left him. Two assistants followed him with a stretcher, which they positioned behind the kneeling boy. Doctor Riu eased Zuko onto his back on the stretcher, one hand supporting his upper back and the other bracing his chest—subtly checking his breathing and heartbeat as well as repositioning him.

“Water!” he barked, and one of the assistants rushed back to the sidelines to fetch two small ceramic jugs that she set beside the doctor. “Close your eyes. This will help you feel a little better,” he murmured soothingly, and slowly poured the water over Zuko’s fire-ravaged face. He gasped—with pain or relief, who could say?—and his whole body shuddered as the water trickled over the burned flesh.

When that was done, the doctor held the other jug to Zuko’s cracked, peeling lips. “Try to drink,” he said. “Your body has lost a lot of water. You need to replace it if you’re going to heal.”

Zuko tried to do as he was told, but he coughed and struggled to swallow. That whimpering-sobbing sound, which reminded Iroh horribly of a beaten dog or a rabbit-fox caught in a trap, paused only when he swallowed.

The nobles who had assembled for this most momentous Agni Kai were still there, watching, some of the closer ranks crowding in to get a better look. Their vulgar noise—gasping, whispering, chattering, exclaiming inane variants on _“Can you believe?”_ —was turning Iroh’s stomach.

He went to the center of the floor, where Ozai had stood, across from his fallen nephew. “Everyone is to leave _now_ , in a sane and orderly fashion,” he ordered in the clear, carrying voice he thought he had left behind on the battlefield outside Ba Sing Se. “Anyone who is still here in ten minutes’ time, other than guards and medical staff, will be arrested. Is that clear?”

They did not stampede toward the doors; Fire Nation nobles, after all, prized their dignity, and prided themselves above all on their talent for the ‘sane and orderly.’ But they did leave quickly, Agni be praised.

Azula lingered, however. The look on her face was… strange: it contained some of the smug triumph that Iroh feared he might have seen on Ozai’s face if he had looked, but some hesitancy, some doubt, perhaps even concern, as well as a hint of revulsion at the sight of Zuko’s blistered, oozing wounds.

“You too, Azula,” Iroh said, more quietly but in the same stern, commanding voice. “Go.”

“He’s my brother,” she protested, not looking at Iroh, her eyes still fixed on Zuko’s slight, vulnerable form. Her tone was mostly petulant, but there was that hint of worry again. Did she fear she might lose him—her punching-bag, her strategic foil, the cracked mirror in which her reflection seemed to shine all the more brightly?

“This is not your place,” Iroh said, and he drew on all the experience of his days leading armies and cajoling or outwitting recalcitrant spirits to give his command the kind of weight that would brook no argument.

Azula finally looked up at him, startled, her eyes widening. Iroh knew that she disdained him for taking Lu Ten’s death so hard and leaving the field of battle, and for the most part he did not care; she was wholly Ozai’s creature, unlike Zuko, who could perhaps still be saved—if he survived this. Azula thought of Iroh as a weak, spineless, broken old man who deserved none of her respect, let alone her obedience. But she had never heard him speak in this voice that radiated authority. Without another word, she turned and followed the rest of the nobles toward the nearest door.

“How can I help?” Iroh asked Doctor Riu. He kept his voice firm and calm for Zuko’s sake.

“You may not want to stay, either,” Riu said gently. “You have already helped in the best way you could.”

“I will stay,” said Iroh, again projecting quiet authority. Riu did not respond, but accepted it.

“I’ll be able to give you something for the pain soon,” the doctor said kindly to Zuko. “But first I need to see how deep the burns are.”

Zuko nodded that he understood, though the movement made him gasp again with pain.

Riu sterilized his hands with a little vial of alcohol from his bag, then started with the right side of Zuko’s face, which had been farther from Ozai’s hand and seemed to have taken less of the blast of flame. The skin was still raw and blistered, mottled red and white, and when Riu gently touched it with a finger, Zuko’s whimpering rose again to a scream.

One of Riu’s assistants knelt behind Zuko’s head to stroke his hair and whisper soothing words while the doctor continued his assessment. As Riu prodded Zuko’s right cheek, his nose, his forehead, the throat-tearing sobs continued, punctuated with plaintive cries of _“It hurts.”_ “I know,” said the nurse behind him. “We’re almost done. You’re doing so well.”

Then Riu moved to the left side of Zuko’s face, which had taken the brunt of his father’s blow. The flesh around Zuko’s eye was so badly swollen that it was forced shut, and he continued to sob as the doctor probed at his eyelid and the skin just under his eye. But when Riu’s examining fingers moved down to the dry red flesh of Zuko’s left cheek and up his temple toward his ear, the boy’s sobs subsided back to quiet whimpering.

“Does that hurt?” Riu asked. “Try to speak; don’t move your head.”

“No, I think?” Zuko croaked hesitantly. The other assistant knelt to give him more water. He drank a sip, coughed weakly, then forced out, “I can feel you touching my cheek, but it doesn’t hurt much. Around the ear… nothing. Is that good?” he asked, without much hope.

Riu didn’t answer, but exchanged a grim look with the assistant cradling Zuko’s head.

“Try to drink a little more water,” the doctor said, “then I’ll give you the medicine to help with the pain.”

Ever obedient, Zuko forced himself to drink, but when the nurse was pouring faster than he could swallow, he coughed and let some water spill down his chin, and weakly raised a hand to push the jug away.

The doctor exchanged another worried look with his assistants. He pulled another small vial from his bag, this one made of nearly opaque black glass. The stopper was attached to a clear glass pipette in which a thick, dark brown liquid was suspended.

“Open your mouth,” the doctor said, gentle as always, and Zuko obeyed. Riu counted out ten drops from the pipette and said “Swallow.”

Iroh knew what was in the dark vial. He had seen it administered to soldiers with terrible injuries whose pain was unbearable: soldiers whose limbs had been crushed by rocks and would need to be amputated; who had been splashed with boiling oil poured from the walls of a besieged city, or struck by friendly fire, or caught in the explosion of a tank. It sent them into a stupor or made them sleep, and those who took it for too long could not stop taking it. They shook and sweated and vomited when it was withheld, and even if the doctors tried to wean them off it, they would become desperate sometimes and steal it from the medical tent when no one was watching. Sometimes in their desperation they took too much and stopped breathing.

Zuko was thirteen years old. He was no soldier; he was not fighting a war. The worst pain he should have had to endure was a broken bone from an ill-judged adventure climbing around on rooftops or on rocks at the seashore (as Iroh knew his restlessly energetic nephew often did).

Iroh had long known that his brother was not a good man. He was ruthless and callous, selfish and possessive. He had isolated his wife to keep her under his exclusive control; he had pitted his children against each other and taught them that the other’s triumph always counted as their own defeat. He thought nothing of sacrificing a whole regiment of new conscripts to achieve a strategic objective.

The thought that attained calm, crystalline clarity now—not, strangely, when Ozai had delivered the blow, or when Iroh had seen the horrific damage to Zuko’s face, or heard his screams fade to trapped-animal whimpers, but as he watched the doctor give him a soldier’s dose of tincture of opium—was that his brother was a monster.

Iroh knew then that Ozai needed to be dethroned, somehow, and as soon as possible. He could not take the throne himself, of course: his authority and good will would inevitably be cast into doubt by the perception that Azulon’s elder son was reclaiming his birthright and taking revenge after his younger brother’s irregular succession. Iroh didn’t give two shits about his birthright. He also couldn’t bring himself to care much that Ozai had probably murdered their father to take the throne; Azulon was scarcely a better man than his younger son, and probably hadn’t been long for the world, anyway. But this… if Ozai could do such a thing to his own son, what would he not be willing to do to other men’s children?

No, it had to be Zuko to overthrow his father. He was too young now to rule, and to install him as a boy Fire Lord with Iroh as regent would scarcely be better than Iroh simply taking the throne for himself. But in five years, or perhaps even less if he proved his readiness…

First Doctor Riu needed to get him through the night.

Zuko’s sobs had subsided to faint moans; his one visible eye was glassy and the eyelid had started to droop. When the doctor’s assistants lifted the stretcher to take him to the infirmary, and Iroh went to walk beside it, he could see that Zuko’s pupil had constricted, as if he had just walked outside into bright daylight. He recognized that, too, from battlefield hospital tents.

Doctor Riu gave him a questioning look from the other side of the stretcher.

“I will not leave him. I will offer what aid I can, or I will stay out of your way; but I will not leave him.”

Iroh hadn’t been with Lu Ten when he was wounded, or when he died. He could still help Zuko in the way he had not been able to help his own son. Maybe, just maybe, things would turn out differently this time. But if not… at least his nephew would have the comfort of a familiar face, a familiar voice, the hand of someone who loved him holding his.

Doctor Riu knew about Lu Ten, of course; everyone in the Fire Nation did. He nodded and did not attempt to dissuade Iroh again.

By the time they reached the infirmary, Zuko had fallen silent. His eyes were closed and his breathing slow—so slow that Iroh feared the seconds between each exhale and when his chest rose again, shallowly, with the next inhale. He did not complain as Riu’s assistants carefully moved him from the stretcher onto a futon.

Judging it safe to speak without the patient hearing, Iroh asked, “Will he live?”

“That depends on whether we can control the infection.” He did not say _‘prevent infection’;_ they both understood that that was all but impossible.

Iroh watched the doctor’s assistants (Ohta and Shun, he learned as Riu directed them) take shears to the long hair around the left side of Zuko’s face—what had not already burned off—then a razor to what the shears had left, exposing the edges of the wound and leaving the area around it clear. His left ear was a ruin; it almost reminded Iroh of pugilists who had taken so many blows that it never regained its shape, but came to resemble the vague impression of an ear in a child’s drawing. The medics irrigated the burns with lukewarm water, cleaning them again, replacing moisture, trying to keep the flesh alive. When the excess fluid had drained away, they salved the wounds with a thick ointment made of honey and herbs.

Before his assistants bandaged Zuko’s face, Riu carefully lifted his swollen left eyelid to examine the eye underneath.

“Will he lose the eye?” Iroh asked. _If he lives_ was the ever-present subtext.

“I don’t think so,” said Riu. “Not immediately, anyway. His eyelid seems to have protected it… though if the tear ducts were damaged, he may end up losing it in the long run. And I can’t tell what internal damage there may have been.”

“He might have lost sight in that eye.”

Riu nodded gravely. “If the Fire Lord’s hand had been just half an inch higher…”

He didn’t have to finish that sentence. Iroh wondered if that was what passed for mercy with his brother: placing his hand on his son’s cheek rather than directly over his eye to unleash his punishing flame.

“I don’t know how the hearing in his left ear may be affected, either,” Riu continued. On the surface his voice was calm, but Iroh could sense a tension underneath it that matched what roiled under his own serene demeanor: horror, indignation, rage. Their eyes met, and in the doctor’s deep brown eyes was a plea: _Do something. This isn’t right._

What was he asking Iroh to do: look after Zuko? take him away from his father? overthrow the Fire Lord? He probably didn’t know himself. Well, Iroh was happy to oblige on all of those counts.

Ohta and Shun wrapped gauze bandages over the top half of Zuko’s face, making a small opening for his right eye so that he’d be able to see when he awoke. Then, carefully, they removed the gold Agni Kai bands from the boy’s thin arms, and Iroh turned away to respect his privacy while they removed his trousers and lifted him gently to wrap him in a simple white robe. Iroh understood why, and wished he didn’t.

They had a few hours’ respite while Zuko slept; while Riu stayed to watch him and make sure nothing changed, Iroh went with Ohta and Shun to fetch some cold food from the kitchens. Was it only just past midday? It felt like an eternity had passed since Iroh had arrived at the Agni Kai chamber that morning. None of them were really hungry, but they all forced themselves to eat a little in the break room of the infirmary to keep their strength and energy up.

Iroh tried to make polite conversation; he knew he would be spending a lot of time with these people over the next several days, at least, and thought he should learn something about them. Ohta, he learned, was from a family of successful shopkeepers in the Harbor City, and she was training to become a doctor. She had excelled in medical school at the Caldera University and had the great honor of being apprenticed to Doctor Riu here at the palace.

Shun, by contrast, was the daughter of palace servants—a footman and a kitchen maid. She had always cared for animals: she fed and played with the ferret-cats who kept the elephant-rats and rabbit-mice away from the grain stores; she hand-nursed baby sparrow-jays and monkey-squirrels she found fallen from the nest and separated from their mothers. As a girl of fourteen, she had come to Riu one day with a sea raven that had broken its wing. She had made a little splint out of sticks, but the bird wasn’t eating, and she feared that she had set its wing wrong and might have made it worse. He was impressed with her work and her instinct, and not only showed her how to make a better splint for the raven, but took her on as an assistant to teach her how to heal sick and injured humans, too. But she still preferred animals, Riu told Iroh with a slight laugh, and Shun blushed.

Shun had always liked Prince Zuko, she admitted shyly. She had spoken to him once, years ago, when he had come across the sheltered nook under a wooden walkway where a ferret-cat had given birth. Shun had been keeping an eye on the kittens while the mother was away hunting; six-year-old Zuko saw her crouched on the grass beside the walkway and asked what was under it. She showed him, and let him hold one of the kittens if he promised to be careful. And he was: careful, gentle, almost reverent with the tiny, fragile life in his hands. Strangely, she thought at the time, he asked her not to let Azula see what was under the boards. Over the years that followed, she came to understand why.

In the brief lull of quiet, Riu looked straight into Iroh’s eyes—a shocking impertinence toward a Prince of Sozin’s line, of Agni’s own blood—and said bluntly, “The next few days will be hard and terrible. Infection will have to be drained, dead tissue debrided. I can keep him sedated most of the time, but we will have to let him wake so he can eat and drink. I can maintain the dose of opium so that the pain is kept at bay while he is awake, but he will be disoriented at best, delirious at worst.”

“I know,” said Iroh. “Recall, doctor: I have been at war.”

“You will be at war again.”

Little changed over the course of the afternoon. Doctor Riu took advantage of the temporary calm to take a nap in a back room. His assistants did little necessary tasks, cleaning, inventorying supplies, gathering the ones they anticipated would soon be needed in a place where they could be easily found. Iroh knelt beside Zuko’s bed, held his hand, and silently apologized for ever letting him into that war room. For not doing something—anything—to stop the travesty of an Agni Kai. For letting Ozai take the throne in the first place.

At some point he must have nodded off, because he was jolted awake by a voice saying, “I beg your pardon, General— Prince Iroh.”

Iroh tried to pretend he had just been meditating, or praying. He turned, not too quickly, to see a courier just inside the door, kneeling with his head down, holding up a scroll wrapped with a red ribbon, its red wax seal stamped with the Fire Lord’s own sigil.

Iroh stood and went to take the scroll. “Thank you,” he said, expecting the courier to rise.

He did not. “The Fire Lord’s decree is meant for Prince Zuko,” he said, still looking at the ground.

“As you can see” (or would if he ever raised his head), “Prince Zuko is resting so that his wounds can heal. I will make sure that he receives the message when he awakes.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the courier said meekly, his voice trembling slightly. Had Ozai instructed him to give the message to Zuko directly? He had to know that his son was in no condition to be opening mail.

“You may go,” Iroh said. His tone was mild, but he made it clear that _may_ meant _shall_.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” said the courier. He stood, bowed from the waist, and backed out the door, not turning around until he was in the hallway.

Sometime during that exchange, Ohta and Shun had managed to make themselves scarce. With dread curdling in his stomach, turning his meager midday meal into heavy stones, Iroh broke the seal and unwrapped the scroll.

_“Let it be known that from this day, by decree of Fire Lord Ozai, Son of Agni and Guardian of His Flame on Earth, Zuko, son of Ursa, is banished from all the lands and waters of the Fire Nation. He is stripped of all rights, powers, and honor pertaining to his former station as Prince of the Fire Nation. He shall be permitted to return, with his titles and honor fully restored, only when he has captured the Avatar, who is the enemy of the Fire Nation and a threat to its interests and security, and brought said Avatar to the Fire Lord alive. The penalty for violating the terms of this banishment is imprisonment for life in the deepest cells of the Prison Tower._

_“In his abundant mercy, Fire Lord Ozai allows Zuko seven days to leave the lands and waters of the Fire Nation before the penalty shall be enforced.”_

Seven days. That could not possibly be enough time. Zuko would still be healing, still vulnerable to infection. Iroh would need to find a very skilled ship’s doctor, preferably one who had served in the Navy… and he would have to ask Riu for a generous store of medical supplies to take with him.

Banished until he captured the Avatar, and the price of returning was living the rest of his life without seeing the sun again—hardly a life at all, and inevitably a short one, for a firebender.

The Avatar had not been seen for a hundred years. He had been a child when Sozin attacked the Air Temples and killed the Air Nomads—all of them, men, women, and children alike, sworn monks and nuns and ordinary families, tattooed airbending masters and bison herders who could scarcely summon a puff to cool their tea. Sozin and Azulon had quietly sent missions to search for the Avatar, to find out whether he had somehow escaped, or whether he had been reborn in one of the Water Tribes. The last Water Tribe Avatar had been born in the Northern Tribe, so the cycle predicted that the next would come from the South; that was why Azulon had ordered that all waterbenders in the Southern Tribe be captured and imprisoned in the Fire Nation if possible, and killed if not.

In one hundred years of searching, no surviving airbenders had ever been found, and none of the hundreds of Southern waterbenders in Fire Nation prisons had ever shown the ability to bend anything other than water. There was some chance, if one of the slain waterbenders had been the Avatar, that the World Spirit now resided somewhere in the Earth Kingdom; there was some chance, too, that in a deviation from the usual cycle, it had been born again into the Northern Water Tribe. But since no Avatar—Air Nomad, Water Tribe, or Earth Kingdom—had emerged to challenge the Fire Nation’s expanding conquest, Iroh had concluded what Ozai must have, too: that in the assault on the Air Temples, the child had entered the Avatar State to defend his home and his people, but had been overwhelmed and killed while in that state, ending the Avatar Cycle forever. The keeper of balance no longer existed to “threaten” the Fire Nation’s “interests and security”; in the long run, nothing could stop Ozai—or perhaps Azula, if Ba Sing Se held out for another few decades—from finishing what Sozin had started.

So Iroh knew what the terms of Zuko’s banishment really meant. A melancholy folk song he had heard in the mountains of the northern Earth Kingdom echoed through his head:

_Tell her to make me a cambric shirt  
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme  
Without no seams or needlework,  
Then she’ll be a true love of mine._

Iroh sat again beside Zuko’s bed, the scroll loosely coiled in his hand. Zuko would never allow himself to believe that the Avatar was gone, that there was no hope of returning home. Far worse than a lifetime of banishment, Ozai had sentenced him to a lifetime of vain hope and pointless searching.

There was a legend he had heard near the city of Gaoling of a man named Wu Gang. He found his wife in the arms of the grandson of the first Earth King, Huang, who had joined Oma and Shu in becoming a spirit-ruler under the earth. Wu Gang killed his wife’s lover, and in punishment, Huang exiled him to a barren rock far above the earth and ordered him to cut down an osmanthus tree in payment for his grandson’s blood—but after every blow he struck at the tree, it healed itself. He was condemned to cut at the tree forever, never able to pay his blood debt to Huang.

This was the punishment that Ozai had decreed for his son—only far crueler, because Wu Gang never hoped to be finished with his labors and allowed to rest. And Iroh, Agni help him, knew he could never tell Zuko that he must give up that hope. Ozai was the judge who had passed the sentence, but Iroh would be the jailer, the overseer who watched him struggle at this fruitless task; and even if he did not crack the whip behind him, he would be watering the thorny vines of _hope_ that pricked at Zuko’s heels.

His head was bowed when he heard another voice—still a child’s voice, but rusty and hoarse. “Father… I’m sorry, Father. I’ll master it, I’ll get it right next time. I’ll do better. I’ll _be_ better.”

Iroh was on his feet in an instant. He set aside the scroll, found a jug of water and brought it back to Zuko’s bed. “Your father isn’t here, Prince Zuko. It’s your uncle. Can you drink a little?”

“Uncle?” Zuko blinked up vaguely. “I can’t see…” He reached up to his left eye and found the bandages. “Why is my face cloth? What happened? Where am I?”

“You’re in the infirmary. You were badly injured; the doctor had to bandage your face, and cover your eye. Please try to drink some water.” He held the jug to Zuko’s lips with one hand and slid the other arm under his head to lift it.

Zuko drank a few sips, but his lips were numb and clumsy, and he let almost as much water dribble out of the sides of his mouth as he managed to swallow. Iroh gently mopped it up with his sleeve.

“Where’s Mother? I want her. I don’t feel right…”

“She’s on her way,” Iroh said. It was easiest, and kindest.

“Good. I dreamed she went away. I thought she might be dead. I thought Father might have…” He left off; apparently even opium-dazed Zuko knew there were some things that should not be spoken aloud.

His hand drifted up to his bandaged face again. “I think I must have slept out in the sun too long. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I did not find you until it was too late,” said Iroh. But he knew that was a lie. “I’m sorry,” he said. That, at least, was true.

Riu must have told his assistants to rouse him if Zuko woke, because he emerged yawning from the back room with Ohta following close behind.

“Prince Zuko, how are you feeling?” the doctor asked kindly, only once he was within view of Zuko’s restricted right eye.

“Are you… you’re the doctor. You took care of me when I had the dragon-tick fever. And the barking cough. And when Azula pushed me and I sprained my wrist.”

Iroh and Riu exchanged a look; they had not previously been given the causal explanation for that incident.

“Oh no, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone it was Azula… don’t tell her I told you. She said she’d kill me, and she might have meant it.”

Before either of them had a chance to respond to that alarming statement, Shun came in with a covered stoneware pot. She set it down on the table beside Zuko’s bed and uncovered it, releasing a cloud of steam and a savory aroma. It was a pale, slightly cloudy broth—chicken or miso, or some mix of the two—with a ladle hooked over the side.

“Can you sit him up a little?” Shun asked the room at large.

“I can sit up myself,” Zuko insisted mulishly, though the mushiness of his words did not inspire confidence. He tried to raise himself on one arm and started swaying, and had to close his uncovered eye while waiting for the dizziness to pass.

Iroh was the closest, and thus the quickest to slide an arm behind Zuko’s shoulder to brace it, with his hand supporting his nephew’s head as if he were still an infant, his neck too weak to hold it up on his own.

Shun dipped the ladle into the broth and held it to Zuko’s lips, still chapped and peeling from the heat of the flame that had burned him. “Can you drink for me?”

“’Course I can drink,” he mumbled. He did better with the broth than he had with the water, but some still escaped his uncoordinated lips. Fortunately, Shun was ready with a towel.

Iroh looked over Zuko’s head at Riu and Ohta. Their shoulders were tense, lips tight, eyes worried. Iroh knew they were waiting, as he was, for the pain to return as the narcotic wore off and Zuko became more lucid and alert.

Shun was able to get five ladlefuls of broth into him (minus what spilled out the corners of his mouth) before he took in a hissing breath of discomfort. “My face… I didn’t fall asleep in the sun, did I?”

“No, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said. He was still a prince, whatever Ozai’s hideous decree said.

“The Agni Kai… the general… it was supposed to be the general. I could have fought…” As the agitation and distress mounted in Zuko’s voice, Iroh could feel a corresponding tenseness in his shoulders that grew to trembling.

Riu darted in with the little black bottle as the trembling turned to shivering and a whimper hovered at the edge of each of Zuko’s too-fast, too-strained breaths. “Shh, it’s all right,” he lied. “Open your mouth.”

Zuko turned his face away. “No, I know what that is. I’m the future Fire Lord. A Fire Lord shouldn’t need it. I’m not afraid of pain.”

Riu looked desperately at Iroh: a plea for help. “Please, Prince Zuko,” Iroh urged gently. “You need to sleep if you are to heal.”

Zuko kept his face turned away for another moment, still trembling, but then gave in. Riu counted five drops this time, and Zuko swallowed.

Iroh eased his head and shoulders back down and moved back to sit at his nephew’s right side, where Zuko could see him if his eye was open. Iroh started stroking Zuko’s hair, which provoked a disgruntled mumble of “Don’t, ’m not a baby.”

Iroh stopped and let his hand rest on the bed, just barely touching Zuko’s: an offer of comfort, without being too overt about it.

Zuko’s eye started to droop closed again. He fought it a few times, stubbornly blinking it back open, but was too weak and exhausted to hold out for long. “Don’t tell Mother…” he mumbled as his eye fell closed, then he trailed off.

Was that all? Don’t tell Mother what—that he had lost the Agni Kai? That his father had maimed him? That he needed opium for the pain? Or something else, something only he knew about, that his clouded mind had dreamed up?

All of them—Iroh, Riu, Ohta, and Shun—breathed out a sigh of relief. He would be free from his pain for another few hours.

But his ordeal, it turned out, was only just beginning. Iroh rose to retrieve the scroll with Ozai’s decree from the counter where he had set it down and silently handed it to Riu.

He watched the doctor’s face as he read it, watched it move from consternation to shock to anger to horror.

“He can’t— he’ll die,” was the first thing he said when he looked up.

“What? Why? What is it?” Ohta asked. Riu passed the scroll to her and she held it up so that Shun could read it over her shoulder, too.

“I will not let him die,” Iroh said with a confidence he did not feel. He knew too well that he did not know if it was a promise he could keep. “But I will need your help. Bandages, burn ointment, antiseptics… whatever instruments will be needed. And… whatever he needs to endure the pain. If you know a good ship’s doctor…?”

“Yes, of course. But… you’re going with him?”

“I will not leave him,” Iroh said again. Riu’s eyes widened as he understood: the vow was not just for today, while the boy was in immediate danger.

“Where will you go?” Shun asked, her voice pained.

“That is up to him. He is still my prince; I am only a retired general.”

“It only says he’s banished from ‘the lands and waters of the Fire Nation,’” Ohta read. “That might mean the colonies are safe. I have a cousin who lives in Yu Dao; she says she likes it there. It might not be so bad.”

Iroh turned to look at her sadly. “Prince Zuko will not be satisfied to settle in the colonies.”

“But what choice does he have?” she asked.

“He will probably want to search the Air Temples first. They are outside the waters of the Fire Nation.”

“He can’t possibly think he’ll find the Avatar there,” Riu protested.

“Recall that this is the boy who stood up in the Fire Lord’s war room to oppose a general who wanted to sacrifice a whole regiment of young soldiers. He accepted the challenge to an Agni Kai when he believed he would be fighting this general, a far more experienced and skilled firebender. Prince Zuko does not understand the words ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ the way we do; in fact, I am not sure he understands the word ‘impossible’ at all. His only chance of coming home lies in capturing the Avatar. Therefore, he must believe it is possible.”

This speech was met with a resounding silence.

“So… you’re prepared to sail around the world with him, searching for someone who no longer exists… for how long? Your Highness,” Ohta added hurriedly, realizing the presumptuousness of her question.

“For as long as he wants to search,” said Iroh.

_Tell her to find me an acre of land  
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme  
Between the salt water and the sea strand;  
Then she’ll be a true love of mine._

“You have to tell him,” Riu said, disbelieving. “You can’t let him kill himself, or drive himself mad, pursuing this fool’s errand.” _That’s what his father wants. You can’t let him win._

“Prince Zuko knows everything about the Avatar that we know,” said Iroh. “He knows that the world thinks it is impossible. He knows that his father thinks it is impossible, though he will deny that. If I say that it is impossible, I tell him only that _I_ think it is impossible, which is something he already knows. If he comes to believe it is impossible, it will be in his own time, when he is ready. And I will stay with him until he no longer needs me… or until my death, whichever comes first.”

Again, silence followed his words; there was nothing more to say. Little was said, beyond brief discussions between the doctor and his assistants about practicalities, until Riu’s wife arrived with dinner.

The doctor introduced her as Yi Min. She was surprised and flustered by the presence of a member of the royal family other than the patient, whom of course she did not expect to have to address. Iroh tried his best to put her at her ease; he returned her bow with courtly graciousness and remarked that Riu was a lucky man indeed—and even luckier than he had realized at first, he added when he tasted the food that she had brought. She fussed that she had only expected to feed her husband and his assistants, and would have brought more and better if she had realized that a _prince_ would be eating it—

“Retired general,” he corrected her. “And I have learned in years of campaigns that nothing tastes better than simple home cooking.”

“I expect you’ll be spending the night here,” Yi Min said to her husband. She glanced toward the open doorway from the break room to the infirmary where Zuko lay in his chemical sleep, his face swathed in bandages.

“I have no choice, I’m afraid—tonight and for the next few nights, until he’s out of danger.” _One way or another._

Yi Min nodded, resigned. “Of course. I’ll keep bringing dinner, then, and breakfast.”

“What have I done to deserve you?” he asked with a fond little smile.

“Given up your nights to save a young boy’s life, among other things,” she replied with a matching smile. “Should I plan to be feeding one more tomorrow morning, Your Highness?” she asked Iroh.

“Tomorrow morning, and for every day your husband must stay.” Iroh resolved to leave extravagant gifts for Riu and Yi Min before he departed with Zuko for the wide world—and for Riu’s assistants, as well.

Later that evening, Ohta and Shun’s shift ended and their place was taken by another pair of assistants: a pale young man named Sung Hyun and a young woman named Mawar, whose light bronze skin, nearly matching her eyes, placed her origin in the southern islands.

“Do you want to sleep for a while?” Riu asked. “You can use the bed in the back room. I’ve slept, so I’ll be all right for the next several hours.”

Iroh shook his head. “I will stay here,” he said, meaning sitting at Zuko’s bedside. “I’m sure I will sleep a bit.”

“That can’t possibly be comfortable,” Mawar remarked, then added “Your Highness.” She, like Ohta, was a medical student doing her apprenticeship here.

“I have slept in much more uncomfortable places,” Iroh said with a wry smile. “And I am not as old as I look,” he added—gently and with good humor, to make clear that he took no offense. Mawar’s face reddened nonetheless.

Iroh kept vigil beside his sleeping nephew with one hand resting near Zuko’s—always there, in case he should reach for it. He meditated, letting the flames of the candles in the wall sconces brighten and dim with his breath, and he prayed to Agni. _Your gift is life, but Your life can bring death. Your son has known so little of life. Grant him a few years more—for what are seventy years in Your eternal reign? They are seven blinks of Your radiant eye, but they are as much as Your children can hope for._

Somewhere between meditation and sleep, Iroh dreamed. He knelt at the top of the Sun Warriors’ great ziggurat, and the Masters Ran and Shaw wove their sinuous dance above him. But in place of the setting sun there stood a golden throne. He could not look straight at the glowing figure that sat on the throne, but he knew it was Agni Himself.

 _“I have heard your prayer, my son,”_ said a voice like the roar of flame. _“As I hear the prayers of millions of My children. Tell me—why should I grant yours above all others?”_

 _“I do not ask for greater favor than any of Your children,”_ Iroh said with his forehead pressed to the ground. _“I ask for only the smallest portion of Your infinite benevolence.”_

_“Do you not ask me to return a life I have once taken? Do you not ask me to favor your prayer over your brother’s?”_

It took Iroh a moment to understand Agni’s questions. The first was about his son: Iroh’s prayer to save Zuko was a prayer to raise Lu Ten from the dead, even if he now bore a different name. The second…

_“My brother prays for his son’s death?”_

_“He prays for the honor and glory of his nation, of_ My _nation. But I read all hearts.”_

Then Agni could read the grief and rage that rose in Iroh’s heart. _“I, too, pray for the honor and glory of Your nation. I dedicate this boy’s life to restoring that honor, to restoring the balance of Your world, to making Your people once again a people of life, not bringers of death.”_

_“You would pledge the life of another? Everyone’s life is only their own to give.”_

_“Then I pledge_ my _life to restoring the honor of my nation, and Yours.”_

 _“But you know that you cannot,”_ said the roaring-flame voice: Agni knew his thoughts about the impossibility of taking the throne for himself.

Now cold despair gripped Iroh’s heart, and he knew that Agni must see that too. _“I pledge my life to guiding the one who can.”_

_“Then it is still his life you pledge, not your own.”_

_“Tell me, then, what can I offer You?”_ Iroh pleaded, his voice breaking along with his heart.

 _“You would pledge the boy’s life to restoring balance?”_ said another voice, deep and silky and dark as a river under a moonless night.

Iroh looked up and he was no longer atop the Sun Warriors’ ziggurat, but in a desolate landscape under an eerie green sky. He knelt between two barren basins of stone, each with an enclosed dome of light at its center, one a cold blue and the other warm gold. Before him was an ancient, twisted tree with a jagged hollow at its center, and something stirred in the darkness inside.

 _“I can pledge no one’s life but my own,”_ Iroh said cautiously.

 _“To Agni, yes… but not to me,”_ said the dark, silken voice from the hollow of the tree.

 _“Who are you?”_ Iroh asked. He had not seen this place, had heard nothing of this tree or the being inside, in all his wanderings through the Spirit World.

_“I am the one who restores balance to the world.”_

_“You are the Avatar?”_ Iroh could not guess how the World Spirit had come to be trapped in this tree between worlds… but he had seen stranger things, and it would explain why the Avatar had been missing for a hundred years.

A laugh like water bubbling lazily from a hot spring. _“Not yet. But I could be.”_

A cold unease, akin to fear, settled in Iroh’s stomach. But… _“You can save him?”_

_“Of course. It is the easiest thing in the world, to tip a soul to one side or the other of the line between life and death. But only if you will pledge his life to me.”_

Iroh hesitated. _“I do not know you. But I have pledged his life to restoring balance in the world, and I will pledge it again.”_

_“It is all the same: to pledge his life to balance is to pledge his life to me.”_

Iroh took a calculated risk. He knew enough of bargaining with spirits to know that leaving some ambiguity in the terms left one room to maneuver, and he sensed that disagreement about the meaning of ‘balance’ might prove significant. _“Then you_ will _save him?”_

_“The bargain is struck. He will live a long life, by the measure of his kind.”_

Iroh startled awake when Zuko’s hand moved, wondering whether that was only a strange dream or something more. With the life he had led, he knew he could not rule out either possibility.

“Mother?” Zuko asked muzzily, then, his good eye squinting, “Uncle. Why are you here?”

“Because you are still unwell.”

“Mother isn’t here.” How could a thirteen-year-old boy sound so young, and yet so ancient and weary?

“No. But I will stay.” He stood to fetch the jug of water from which Zuko had been drinking and offered it to him again.

“Not thirsty,” Zuko complained. “But I do have to go to the bathroom.” He tried to sit up, but lurched to the side, and Iroh had to catch him to keep him from rolling onto the floor.

He called for Sung Hyun: it was more appropriate that a young man should accompany him, rather than a young woman, and he thought Zuko would be ashamed if Iroh himself offered. The young man hurried over. He levered Zuko upright with an arm under his back, then laid Zuko’s arm over his shoulders to help him stand. “Here, lean on me, Your Highness,” he murmured.

“I don’t need someone to come _with_ me,” Zuko protested.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” Sung Hyun said, and pulled him to his feet.

“A good leader knows his limits, and knows when he must accept help,” said Iroh.

“To go to the bathroom?” Zuko grumbled.

“When you are badly injured, yes.”

Sung Hyun guided Zuko through a door beside the one to the break room and closed it behind them.

Iroh had hoped to take the moment of solitude to reflect upon his dream—or was it a vision?—but he found the memory already fading. He recalled only the dim outlines: he had prayed to Agni for Zuko’s life, but Agni could not help him—or _would_ not. But someone else _would_ help… in exchange for a promise. What had Iroh promised him? The promise Agni had rejected was to dedicate Zuko’s life to restoring the honor of the Fire Nation. The other voice had not accepted that promise, had it? He thought it had asked for something else…

Iroh did not have long to try to remember, as he was pulled into the same routine as a few hours before: trying to get Zuko to drink water, to eat some reheated broth, and when he began to feel pain again, to submit once more to sedated sleep. When Iroh thought of the dream again, its contents were gone, floating out of reach whenever he tried to turn his mind’s eye to them, like wisps of fog dispersing in the morning sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got original character names from all over the place (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian), but I named the doctor Riu (spelled with an 'i' instead of a 'y' because the creators use 'y' in really strange ways, as in Ty Lee, Shyu, Kya) after the doctor protagonist of Camus's _The Plague_ , whose name is Rieux.
> 
> ETA 5 June: I'm getting a lot of people thinking that Zuko has already merged with Vaatu and become the Chaos Avatar. I guess it's not completely clear and I'm not sure how to make it clear without messing up the POV, but he hasn't. That will happen in the actual AU fic.
> 
> ETA 21 August: I've changed the reference to the story of Sisyphus to the story of Wu Gang, sometimes known as "the Chinese Sisyphus," thanks to a reader's suggestion. In the version of the story I'm using (at least according to Wikipedia) the god-emperor who punishes Wu Gang is Yandi, the Flame Emperor, but I switched the name to Huang, the name of the Yellow Emperor, because he's associated with the element of earth rather than fire. It seemed appropriate for the first Earth King.
> 
> I've also edited the fic to remove all references to chairs, which they do seem to use in the Earth Kingdom (and have used widely in China since the 12th century) but don't so much in the Fire Nation (and still don't much in Japan).


	2. Days 2-5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko's recovery proceeds less than smoothly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha did I say there would only be two chapters? I overestimated my own ability to refrain from adding gratuitous whumpy details.

The next few days were as terrible as Riu had promised, as terrible as anything Iroh had seen in the midst of war. The next morning Zuko was shivering with fever, his chest flushed, and when his bandages were removed, it was clear that infection had set in. Iroh was grateful beyond expression that Zuko could remain asleep while the doctor and his assistants drained polluted fluid and cut blackened flesh away from his wounds.

With every stray twitch of Zuko’s muscles, Iroh feared that he could feel what was happening, but was paralyzed and unable to fight—like those strange experiences between sleep and waking when he could hear and just barely see what was going on around him, but could not open his eyes all the way, could not move his leaden tongue to speak. But when Zuko woke again a few hours later, after fresh ointment had been applied to his burns and fresh bandages carefully wrapped, he said nothing of pain or horror, only muttered about his mother, about Azula, about who was feeding the turtle-ducks, and once, when he saw Shun, about ferret-kittens under a walkway and whether they were safe.

Iroh helped however he could—encouraging Zuko to eat and drink, persuading him to submit to necessary indignities—and stood aside when he could not. He walked through the hell of those days with a strange calm certainty that Zuko would survive, which he somehow knew was not due to his confidence in Riu’s skill, however firm it might be.

That certainty persisted even when Zuko began shivering more than he had with the fever, his heartbeat grew quick and faint, and his lips and fingers took on a purple tinge, verging on blue. Riu warned him that what they must do was an experimental procedure, and risky. Calm amid the urgency around him, in the unseen eye of this storm, Iroh told him to do what he thought best. A needle was slid into the vein in the inside of Zuko’s elbow, which was barely visible through the papery skin, and warm saltwater slowly injected, little by little. Ohta and Shun watched anxiously, chafing Zuko’s icy hands, massaging his upper arm as if that might speed the work of the treatment, checking the pulse at his other wrist.

Gradually the color returned to his lips, his heartbeat slowed and strengthened: the experiment seemed to have worked. Shun openly wept with relief, and Riu looked as if he might start weeping, too. Iroh shared in their jubilation—even as Riu warned them all, needlessly, that the danger had not yet passed—guiltily concealing that he had not shared their fear.

Four days of draining abscesses and debriding dead flesh; of restoring a fading, struggling heartbeat with infusions of saltwater; of letting Zuko wake, shivering with fever and speaking slurred half-sense, only to eat and drink what he could and to eliminate what little was in his body. Sometime in the fourth night, Zuko’s fever broke; the infection had receded. His skin was cool but not cold, neither flushed nor blue; his heartbeat was strong and steady.

On the fifth day, Riu decided it was time to let Zuko stay awake longer, and to start lowering the dose of opium to where it would dull the pain of his injuries, but not send him to sleep.

“Uncle?” he said when he stirred. Over his four days of drugged, fevered sleep and intermittent waking, he had learned to call for Iroh, not for his mother… though he still sometimes woke with abject apologies to his father on his lips.

“I’m here, Prince Zuko.”

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Just after sunrise.”

“I shouldn’t have slept so long… I’ll be late for training. Master Kunyo will be angry.”

Kunyo had not been Zuko’s firebending master in years—not since he had quarreled with Azula and Ozai had sent him to the colonies. “He will not be angry,” said Iroh. “He knows you are ill.”

Slowly he recalled where he was. Iroh gently talked him through the realization, as he had too many times already. It added new cracks to his heart every time Zuko remembered.

Mawar helped him to sit up against the wall with pillows cushioning his back. She handed him a bowl of soup and a spoon and asked if he could eat unassisted. He managed three bites before the spoon dropped from weak fingers into the bowl with a splash and a clatter. Without comment, Mawar wiped up the spilled broth, picked up the bowl, and held a spoonful to his lips. He received it meekly; he had stopped protesting days ago that he did not need help with every little thing.

“How are you feeling?” Riu asked when he had finished the bowl of soup.

“Sort of… floaty?” Zuko ventured.

“Are you in pain?”

“There’s always pain,” Zuko said matter-of-factly. “It’s just… I don’t really mind it.”

Iroh had heard wounded soldiers say that before, but it never failed to horrify him. Hearing it from his thirteen-year-old nephew…

“Are you going to make me sleep again?” Zuko asked the doctor.

“No. But I need you to tell me when the pain becomes more than you can bear.”

“Good,” said Zuko. Iroh strongly suspected that Zuko would place ‘more pain than he could bear’ far past where Iroh would have chosen for him.

As Zuko became increasingly lucid, he had questions. “How bad is it?” he asked, looking at Iroh. “Don’t lie to me.”

Riu answered. “The left side of your face will scar… badly, I’m afraid. Your eye is safe for now, but I don’t know whether you’ll still have sight in it… or hearing in your left ear. We’ll have to test it when we change the bandages.”

“Thank you,” he said. “But I meant… my father. Does he hate me? What will I have to do to make it right with him?”

Iroh didn’t know how to explain. He had tucked the Fire Lord’s decree into his sleeve; it was rumpled and creased now, but still readable. “I’m so sorry, Prince Zuko,” he said, handing it to his nephew.

Zuko struggled at first to read it with only one eye; he had to move the paper around to find a position and distance from which he could make out the words.

Iroh knew the moment that he had begun understanding what was on the scroll. Zuko had never been able to conceal his emotions; it was how he had gotten himself in that accursed Agni Kai in the first place, by letting his indignation burst out instead of holding it behind the dams of caution and courtly propriety. Even with most of his face covered, Iroh could see his devastation in his one uncovered eye, in the agonized twist of his mouth.

For all his fatal transparency, Zuko was still trying not to cry: he knew that tears were unmanly, unprincely. And he succeeded in stemming his tears—but beyond his control, perhaps even without his awareness, a sound began in his throat, a high keening whine, the sound of grief beyond words, of an animal in pain.

Iroh rushed to kneel on the bed beside him and fold him in his arms. Zuko sat there paralyzed, still clutching the scroll, trembling against Iroh’s chest, dry-eyed and keening.

Iroh didn’t let go until the sound gave out, leaving only the trembling, and still no tears. When he finally pulled away, he found that Riu and his assistants had left the room, probably feeling that they had intruded on something deeply private.

Iroh looked at his nephew’s face, what little of it he could see beneath the bandages. His eye was clear, his mouth no longer twisted with anguish, but set in a firm line. “I’ll need a ship,” he said calmly. “And a crew.”

How many times in a few days could a heart break? That calm determination was the first sign of the drug, the poison, called _hope_. The poisoning was a long, slow torture; once it was in the body, the process of withdrawal was even harder and crueler than that of opium.

“I will get them for you,” said Iroh.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Zuko said stoically—reluctant, as always, to accept help.

“You didn’t ask; I offered. Besides, I’ll be sailing on the ship with the crew, so it’s in my own interests to make sure they are adequate.”

Zuko gave him a puzzled frown. “You’re coming with me? Why?”

Reluctant not only to accept help, but to believe that anyone might _want_ to help him. “I want to use my retirement to travel the world.”

Zuko looked even more confused. “You’ve already traveled the world, haven’t you?”

“Unfortunately, much of that traveling was done in my capacity as a General of the Army. Not the best circumstances for enjoying the scenery.”

Now Zuko’s frown turned reproving. “The purpose of my voyage is looking for the Avatar, not sightseeing.”

“Ah, but you can’t _look_ for something without _seeing_ what’s around you!” Iroh pointed out cheerfully.

Zuko sighed. “As long as you can make yourself _somewhat_ helpful…”

“I will come along as your firebending master. Does that sound helpful enough to you?”

Zuko flinched at the word _firebending_ , and Iroh instantly felt guilty—but he knew that his nephew would have to overcome his fear of his own element sooner or later. For a bender not to be able to bend… it was like depriving a seeing man of all light, a hearing man of all sound; like binding the legs of an able-bodied man so that he could never walk. What had been done to the Southern waterbenders in the Fire Nation’s prisons was monstrous. Iroh could almost understand the ones who (the quiet rumors said) had turned to bending the blood of rats, and then of their jailers.

“Yes, all right,” Zuko said. He paused, then added quietly, “Thank you, Uncle.”

“No need to thank me! My motives are entirely self-interested.” Zuko, fortunately, took this in the correct spirit, and even went so far as to smile.

Ohta and Shun returned for the day shift, and were surprised and delighted to see Zuko fully awake. Shun let out a joyful little laugh before she stifled it, looking embarrassed.

“Your Highness!” she said, and she and Ohta bowed to him as his princely station required. “You must be doing better.”

“I guess so?”

“His fever has broken, thank Agni,” said Iroh—and what was that odd twinge he felt at the mention of the Sun Spirit’s name? A question to be considered later. “The infection has been beaten back, for now.”

Riu, Mawar, and Sung Hyun took the sound of other voices as a sign that it was safe to emerge from the break room. The latter two bowed to both Zuko and Iroh before taking their leave for the day… and after a moment’s hesitation, Mawar briefly gripped Zuko’s shoulder. Iroh knew that customs around personal interaction in the southern islands were less formal, more familiar, but he did not think that was why she did it.

As always, Riu and his assistants washed their hands thoroughly in preparation for the daily change of the dressings on Zuko’s burns. Ohta unwrapped the bandages with painstaking carefulness, but Zuko still hissed with pain as they came away from the raw flesh. The right side of his face was already healing well; it still had the shiny, wet look of new skin, but it was no longer blistered. The left… well, at least the swelling had reduced enough that his left eye could be opened a slit. What little could be seen of the white around the golden iris was angry red.

“Can you close just your right eye, Prince Zuko?” Riu asked. He did. “Can you see anything?”

“Just… light and blurry shapes,” said Zuko.

Riu breathed out a heavy sigh of relief.

“That’s good?” Zuko asked hopefully.

“If you haven’t lost vision entirely, the inner workings of the eye weren’t destroyed. There’s a chance that it will heal with time… and it will surely improve as the swelling around the eye continues to go down. You can’t be expected to see much from an eye that’s barely open…” He smiled and reached out as if to pat Zuko on the back, before he remembered his patient’s exalted rank and pulled his hand back in.

Riu cleared his throat. “Now, could you cover your right ear?” When Zuko had done as he was told, the doctor snapped his fingers right beside his left ear.

Zuko flinched violently away from his hand, and Iroh didn’t think it had anything to do with the loudness of the sound.

“I’m sorry I startled you, Your Highness.” Riu must have known that wasn’t precisely it, either, but it was generous of him to offer that explanation. “What did you hear?”

“It… sounded more like a soft _thud_ than a snap.”

“So there’s been some damage to upper register perception. But that’s still much better than it could have been… and again, it might still improve.”

“That is very good news,” said Iroh with an encouraging smile at Zuko. He felt it would have been cruelly ironic to say that Zuko had been _lucky_ … and good news was in short supply.

“Now we need to clean and re-bandage… and it would be easier to do that if you were lying down. Apologies, Your Highness.”

Zuko did not comply right away. “Before you put new bandages on… can you bring me a mirror?”

Everyone else froze. Ohta and Shun directed horrified, panicked looks at Riu, who turned his own consternation toward Iroh.

“I don’t think that is wise just yet, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said carefully. “Your wounds are still healing; they look far worse now than they will in the future. This is not the face you will have to show the world.”

“ _You’ve_ all seen them,” said Zuko. “Why shouldn’t I? It’s my face.”

Iroh exchanged another look with Riu, who took a deep fortifying breath. “Your Highness… I am a doctor. My assistants are training for a life in the medical profession. Our profession demands that we confront terrible damage to the body in order to be able to repair it. Your uncle has fought in the war; he, too, has had to inflict terrible damage, and watch it being inflicted, in the defense of our nation.” Iroh cringed internally at that lie— _defense_ had nothing to do with it—but he did not attempt to correct it. “But there is no reason for you to see such things. There is no reason for you to distress yourself unnecessarily.”

“But it’s my body,” Zuko insisted again, looking stubbornly between his uncle and the doctor. “If it’s as distressing as all that… shouldn’t I know? I’m the one feeling it; why shouldn’t I see it?”

“You should not feel it, either”—and was that a hint of anger coming out in Riu’s voice, the anger he had been tamping down for four harrowing days? He took in a breath through his nose and reined it in again. “I am trying my best to ensure that you do not have to feel it.”

“I told you, I already feel it; it just doesn’t bother me.”

“There’s nothing we can give you to make the sight not bother you,” said Shun. Iroh turned to her in surprise; he had not expected that soft voice to intervene in an argument with an obstinate prince.

“Does it bother _you?”_ he asked her, and then looked around to the others, aiming the question at all of them.

“Yes,” she said, meeting his gaze frankly.

Zuko seemed to appreciate her directness. “I want to see before I have to leave,” he said, choking slightly on the last word. He swallowed painfully. “I want to have _some_ idea of ‘the face I’ll have to show the world’ for the rest of my life.”

Iroh closed his eyes for a moment, gathering strength. “You have three more days to heal before we must go. Perhaps it will not be so much better by then… but wait another three days.”

Zuko looked unhappy about it, but he nodded—and then winced and hissed again.

“Lie down, please, Prince Zuko,” Riu said in a crisp tone that indicated he was done arguing for the moment.

Instead of going to the tap for warm water to rinse the wounds, he reached for the little black vial, sitting ready to hand on the counter beside the tubs of ointment and the rolls of bandages. Zuko gave him a betrayed, resentful look, and he said, “I won’t give you enough to send you to sleep again; just enough to take the edge off the pain.”

Zuko’s jaw tightened briefly, but he opened his mouth. Three drops this time. “Tell me if it’s still bad and I’ll increase the dose.” Iroh had a feeling that Zuko wouldn’t, no matter how bad it was.

They waited a few minutes for the drug to take effect before rinsing the wounds again, but Zuko still gasped when the water touched his face and whimpered slightly when Shun oh-so-gingerly patted it dry with a clean cloth. He sighed with relief when Ohta applied the burn ointment; some of the herbs in it must have cooling or numbing powers. He pressed his lips tightly together to keep from making a sound as Shun wrapped fresh bandages around his face, carefully leaving openings for his right eye and ear.

As soon as they had finished, Zuko’s right eye started drooping again. He blinked it open again to look accusingly up at Riu. “Thought you said you wouldn’t make me sleep again.”

“I didn’t intend to,” the doctor replied. “Perhaps I need to set your standard dose lower. Or perhaps your body is still working hard to heal itself, and you have had a difficult morning.”

“Lower dose,” Zuko grumbled.

Riu raised his eyebrows skeptically at Iroh, then said, “I can try that next time. In the meantime, we’ll leave to let you sleep.” He and Ohta retreated to the break room. Before she followed them, Shun brushed a gentle hand through the long, silky hair that remained on the right side of Zuko’s head. Again, a grievous breach of propriety—but far from being shocked or offended, Iroh found himself touched and grateful for these signs of the protective affection his nephew inspired in his caretakers, strongly enough to overcome the powerful, deeply ingrained taboos of a culture in which station and propriety were all-important.

“Is there anything you would like me to get for you, Prince Zuko?” Iroh asked his drowsing nephew. “A book, perhaps, to read while you recuperate?” Or rather, for Iroh to read _to_ him, since reading with his one good eye seemed to be a strain.

“There’s a book on my bedside table,” he mumbled. “Was reading that.”

“Of course. I will fetch it.” Iroh turned to go—not only to retrieve the book, but to ask his brother the Fire Lord for a ship. _Preferably one that will not sink an hour out of the harbor._

“Who were you talking to?” Zuko asked sleepily before Iroh reached the door.

Iroh paused and turned back, frowning. “Was I talking to myself just now?” He very much hoped he had not said spoken aloud his thought about securing a non-sinking ship…

“No, the other night. Few nights ago.”

“Probably Doctor Riu or one of his assistants.”

“No, I know what _they_ sound like. Different voices. Far away. They sounded weird.”

Iroh froze. Tendrils of a remembered dream hung at the edge of his awareness, just in reach, but every time he turned toward them they shrank away.

“Do you remember what they said? Or what I said to them?”

“Don’t know. Something about… promises. And balance. I didn’t understand.”

Zuko had brought one of those tendrils of memory within reach, and Iroh had the strange, guilty feeling that he had incurred a debt, but it was Zuko who would have to pay. _But isn’t that true of my whole generation and his? We and our parents and grandparents broke the world, but we leave it to our children to repair._

“It sounds like you just had a dream, Prince Zuko.”

“Didn’t feel like a dream.”

“Sometimes dreams can feel very real, especially when we are ill. And some drugs can make that feeling even stronger.”

Zuko gave a dissatisfied grumble, but the need to sleep won out over the desire to keep arguing.

A few steps out of the infirmary, Iroh realized that he had missed breakfast and he was ravenous. He stopped by the kitchen first to ask the cooks for some rice and miso soup—there was no time for anything more elaborate. Then he went to the antechamber to the Fire Lord’s throne room and asked Guan Yu, the steward, if Ozai might grant him an audience.

Few other petitioners were there; Ozai’s subjects all knew that he was not a generous ruler. The only ones who dared to come before him were nobles with property and inheritance disputes who were not satisfied with the decision of a local judge or magistrate and would put their claims to rest only if they were denied by the Fire Lord himself. Iroh wondered whether his station would be enough to allow him to jump the (short) queue, or whether Ozai would taunt him by making him wait.

Apparently his brother was in a gracious mood, because Guan Yu returned after a few minutes to tell Iroh that the Fire Lord would see him. The waiting nobles looked unhappy, but not surprised.

“Prince Iroh,” was how Ozai greeted him once he had given the proper bow. _Prince_ , not _General:_ the rank that Ozai had now surpassed, not the one that he had never been able to claim. “What brings my elder brother before me?”

“I would ask a boon of you, Fire Lord.”

“What boon?” he asked, starting to sound suspicious. He must have guessed that this had something to do with Zuko.

“I need a ship, and a crew to sail it. A small one would suffice, as long as it is seaworthy.”

“What need could you have for a ship, brother?” Ozai drawled, his voice cold. His suspicions had been confirmed.

“I have retired from my position in the Army; now I wish to spend my retirement traveling the world.”

“Indeed?”

Iroh sighed. Apparently he would have to sell it; Ozai was making him dance for his dinner (or in this case, his transportation). “I have nothing to keep me here, my lord… brother. My wife and son are dead. I have no royal duties to speak of; you have never needed my counsel.” _Or rather: you have never asked for, valued, or followed my counsel._ “What still gives me joy in life is to experience new things: to see new landscapes, hear new music, taste new food and drink. Let me live out my life seeking out new experiences.”

“You have no more desire for honor and find joy only in the pleasures of the senses.” Ozai did not need to curl his lip to convey his contempt; the words alone sufficed.

“The pursuit of honor has brought me nothing but pain. I seek a simpler life now, with simpler joys.”

“Hmm.” Ozai was still toying with him, but Iroh could tell that he was going to agree. After all, if he had _not_ planned to give Zuko a ship, he would have imprisoned or simply killed him outright rather than bothering with the formality of banishment.

He must have a reason for wanting Zuko banished rather than imprisoned or dead, at least for now. Iroh doubted that it had anything to do with the remote possibility of Zuko’s actually finding the Avatar. Rather, he probably wanted his embarrassing, troublesome son out of the way, but always potentially available in case Ozai thought he might become useful again. He did not care much about how he appeared to his subjects—if he did, he would not have maimed his son to ‘teach him respect’—but perhaps even he realized that _killing_ one’s own son would not play well among the nobility, to whom family loyalty was paramount. And if Ozai decided it was, after all, in his interest to have Zuko killed… it would be easier to make it appear accidental if he was out in the world, pursuing a dangerous mission, than safely locked in prison.

“I can spare a small vessel from my Navy. An older model should do—one that is no longer needed for the war, but sufficiently well-armed to protect against pirates and enemy ships. Will that suit you?”

“Yes, it will suit me very well, my lord. And the crew?”

“Oh, yes. I will ask the Secretary of the Navy to detail a small crew to escort you on your travels. Only those that can be spared from the war effort, of course.”

Iroh had a feeling that the sailors who ‘could be spared’ would be some combination of those whose injuries prevented a return to active duty and those who had proven incompetent or insubordinate, or else pissed off a commanding officer a few too many times, but had not given anyone sufficient pretext to discharge them.

“Your generosity does you great credit, Fire Lord.” Iroh bowed low.

“If that is all, you are dismissed from my presence,” said Ozai, deliberately sounding bored.

“Thank you, my lord.” Iroh backed out of the room, keeping his head respectfully lowered.

Well, that was that taken care of. Iroh breathed out a long, slow sigh of relief.

Next he went to Zuko’s bedroom to get the book he had requested. The bed was neatly made—they had servants for that, of course—but Zuko’s desk was in the same disarray in which he had left it before the Agni Kai four days ago. It made the room still feel lived-in, as if Zuko might come back at any moment to continue studying the nation’s laws or history or the physics and mathematics of artillery weapons. As if he was not lying in the infirmary, drugged and swathed in bandages, with barely three more days before he had to leave his home forever. Would he even have a chance to return to this room to gather the things he needed, or wanted, or loved? Perhaps Iroh should take down a list of the things Zuko wanted to take with him into exile. Certainly the crossed broadswords that hung on the wall in pride of place. But the theater masks—a beautiful, bittersweet reminder of his mother—he would no doubt have to leave behind. What use would he have for them?

The book on his bedside table was a collection of drama scripts. Zuko, like his mother, had always loved the theater. Perhaps they would have the chance to go see plays together in the colonies or in the cities of the Earth Kingdom… if Zuko ever allowed himself a respite from the mad search for an enemy’s ghost.

Iroh returned to the infirmary to find Zuko still sleeping—almost a natural sleep, instead of the narcotic stupor of the past four days; his breathing was still slow, but deep rather than troublingly shallow. Iroh joined the medics in their break room for a small midday meal. They made desultory small talk, but every word and glance was heavy with things that couldn’t be spoken.

The disadvantage to natural sleep was that it brought dreams. They had not quite finished eating when they heard sounds from the infirmary—fearful whimpering, then muttered words: “No, Father, I am your loyal son. I’m loyal, I’m loyal…” All four of them rushed back into the infirmary as Zuko gave a terrified shout and thrashed violently enough to throw off the blanket that covered him.

Shun reached his bed first and grasped his shoulder to shake him awake. “Prince Zuko,” she said sharply. “Your Highness. Wake up. You’re dreaming.”

Zuko’s right eye opened and he blinked a few times, realizing where he was. He was still panting with exertion and terror. He looked over at Shun and took a moment to recognize her. “I— I’m in the infirmary,” he said without prompting. His eye was still wide and wild, as if he was struggling to believe what he had just said.

“Yes, Your Highness,” she said. “You’re safe.”

Iroh was a few steps behind her; when he reached Zuko’s bedside, Shun rose and stepped aside to let him take her place. He gripped his nephew’s shoulder with one hand and with the other clasped his hand and brought it to his chest. “You’re safe, Prince Zuko,” he echoed, his voice hoarse with all the tears of grief and rage that in four days he still had not allowed himself to shed.

But if he had thought Zuko would cling to him and weep against his shoulder, he still did not know his nephew. “I know that,” he said irritably. “It was just a stupid nightmare.” He did not, however, pull his cold, shaking hand out of his uncle’s grasp.

“You have been through a terrible ordeal,” Iroh said gently. “Nightmares are nothing to be ashamed of. I still have nightmares from the war.” Nightmares in which the face of every soldier he had seen gutted by an enemy’s lance or crushed by a bender’s stone was his son’s face. Even the Earth Kingdom soldiers burned by his own forces, or struck through the eye or throat by the unfailing arrows of the Yuyan—all of their faces were Lu Ten’s.

“I’m not ashamed,” Zuko insisted, bristling in a way that suggested he wasn’t being completely honest. “But I’m not a child. I don’t need to go running to my mother’s— or anyone’s room when I have a bad dream.”

Iroh sighed. “I know,” he said. He gave Zuko’s hand a last reassuring squeeze before he released it.

“Did you get the book I asked for?” Zuko wanted to know. He pushed himself with trembling arms to sit up against the pillows. Shun adjusted the pillows behind him, subtly helping him to sit up properly, before she and the other medics retreated to give them privacy.

“I did.” Iroh pulled it out of his sleeve and opened it to the table of contents. “Where did you leave off?”

“I don’t need you to read to me,” said Zuko, still irritable.

“You will give yourself a headache trying to read with only one eye.”

Zuko sighed. “I’d just finished reading _The Painted Lady’s Revenge_.”

“Ah. So _The Phoenix King’s Son_ is next.”

“Uncle, you don’t have to do the different voices,” Zuko said after Iroh had read a few lines. “I’m thirteen, not a five-year-old you need to entertain while Mom is busy.”

“But how will you know who is speaking?”

“You read the speaker’s name, then the line.”

“But that disrupts the flow of the action!”

Zuko rolled his eyes (Iroh presumed the left one was rolling under the bandages, too). It was the most normal teenage thing he’d done in days.

Shun came in with another bowl of soup for the patient and he ate it—using his own hands!—while Iroh continued reading.

It had been some hours since Zuko’s last dose of the tincture and Iroh watched anxiously for any sign that he was in pain. Riu and his assistants drifted in and out, pretending to have important tasks involving the supply cabinets, but Iroh could tell that they, too, were keeping eagle-hawk eyes on Zuko. Was he clenching his teeth or his fists? Did his eye look glazed, his pupil dilated?

For a brief spell of time, while Iroh read _The Phoenix King’s Son_ (a tragicomic melodrama with a redemptive ending), they could pretend that things were normal—that Zuko was in the infirmary with a bad bout of moo-sow pox or ember flu, or a moderate accidental injury. Iroh kept doing the voices in spite of Zuko’s discouragement, and Zuko kept up an opinionated commentary both on the story itself and on Iroh’s stagecraft (“If you’re not going to say whose line it is, make the voices more distinct! I can’t tell who’s talking.” “That part is supposed to be _seriously moving_ and you’re just making it sound ridiculous! It’s a _drama_ , not a farce!”).

When the play was finished and Zuko had argued with Iroh about whether the denouement was plausible (“His character completely changed in the third act—and who really _swoons_ when faced with a moral dilemma?”), there was a small comfortable lull.

Then, abruptly, Zuko asked: “Did you talk to my father about a ship?” He stumbled, just a little, over the words ‘my father.’

“Yes. He has agreed to give me— us a small ship and a crew.”

Zuko nodded tightly. “Thank you, Uncle.” He started picking restlessly at a loose thread in the blanket. “I’ll need books, too. History scrolls. Whatever I can find about the Air Nomads and the Avatar. When can I go to the library?”

“Zuko, I’m not sure that’s a good idea while you’re still healing. And your eye…”

“I can’t let you do everything for me!” he snapped. “This is _my_ mission. It’s _my_ honor that can only be regained if _I_ succeed.” His voice cracked and he looked away, blinking. “Besides, I need to be on a ship in less than three days. I can handle a trip to another wing of the palace.”

Iroh sighed. “You can ask the doctor if you can go tomorrow.”

“Go where?” Riu asked oh-so-casually, just happening to wander back in when he heard Zuko’s voice raised in distress.

“The library. I need to do research if I’m going to find the Avatar.”

“Ah. Why don’t you make a list of topics you need information on? I can give it to Ohta to take to the library. She likes doing that kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?” she asked innocently, as if she hadn’t been listening attentively to the whole conversation.

“Archival research. Finding things in libraries.”

“Ooh, yes! I wanted to do a doctoral thesis in the _history_ of medicine, but my parents insisted that I had to become an, ahem, _actual_ doctor.”

Zuko scowled around at the adults, suspecting a conspiracy. “Fine. I’ll give you a list.”

“Excellent!” said Riu. “Now, are you feeling all right? How bad is the pain?”

“It’s fine. I’m _fine_ ,” said Zuko, vehemently but not at all convincingly.

“You will forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical, considering how long it has been since your last dose.”

“You can be as skeptical as you like,” Zuko retorted.

Iroh wondered what Zuko thought he had to gain or prove by gritting his teeth through his pain… but then he remembered his brother’s words to his son before striking the blow.

Yi Min arrived with dinner for the staff (and Iroh) and was happily surprised to see the patient awake. He was stiff and curt in acknowledging her bow and thanking her for her concern.

They ate in shifts so that Zuko would not be left alone. No one offered him any of the well-spiced food—he was still restricted to mild, easy-to-swallow soup—and he did not ask, however enticing the smell.

Iroh continued reading from the book of plays while the others ate, and Zuko continued critiquing his interpretation—with more ill humor than before, he thought, which worried him. Ohta took over reading while Iroh ate in the break room with Riu and Yi Min. He could hear through the open door to the infirmary that she did not attempt to do different voices for the different characters, and just read the names before the lines. Zuko did not make any comments at all, either on her performance or on the story itself.

“I’m not hungry,” Zuko said shortly when Shun brought him a bowl of soup for his evening meal.

“But you need to eat to keep up your strength, Your Highness,” she said, gentle and reasonable.

Iroh heard the clink of a spoon against the bowl, then the clatter of the spoon being dropped back into it. “I can’t,” said Zuko, his voice sounding strangled. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Iroh and Riu dashed back into the infirmary to see Ohta hastily passing a metal basin to Shun just in time for Zuko to lean over and retch into it—dryly, at first, then a small amount of liquid, what little was left of his midday meal.

“You _idiot_ ,” said Riu in a thunderous voice that Iroh had never heard before. Ohta and Shun both looked up, startled and guilty, but Riu was not looking at either of them. He was looking straight at his patient, and he was furious.

He grabbed one of the ceramic jugs of water they kept filled and ready and thrust it at Zuko. “Rinse out your mouth and drink what you can,” he snapped.

“How dare you speak to me that way?” Zuko rasped. He failed to sound as imperious as he hoped when his voice was weak and even hoarser than usual. “I am a _prince_.”

“Yes, you are a prince, _and_ you are an idiot.” Riu kept holding the jug in his face and glaring at him until he gave in and took it. He took a small mouthful to rinse his mouth and spat it into the basin that Shun held out for him.

Riu put his hand to Zuko’s lower cheek, visible below the bandages, then to the back of his neck. “Slightly feverish,” he said to his assistants. “Not sure if that’s the infection returning, or if it’s just from untreated pain. _Drink_ ,” he snapped again at Zuko, and went to the counter to grab the little black vial. Zuko took another small sip of water and held it in his mouth for a moment before he swallowed painfully.

“Open your mouth.” Riu had said it over a dozen times in the past four and a half days, but always gentle, patient, reassuring. Now there was a threat in it: _open your mouth or I’ll hold your jaw open for you._ Zuko obeyed, glaring one-eyed, and Riu counted out four drops.

“Thought you said you’d lower the dose,” Zuko accused him once he’d swallowed.

“Consider that two doses’ worth,” Riu said grimly.

Iroh went to his nephew’s side as the medics moved away to clean up. He ran a hand through the hair over the right side of Zuko’s forehead and could feel sweat dampening his hairline. “Please, Prince Zuko,” he said. “We all want to help you. Stop making it harder for us.”

“Don’t need your help,” Zuko muttered. “Have to do it myself.”

Had to do what? He wasn’t searching for the Avatar yet. _‘Learn respect,’_ said a dark voice in Iroh’s head.

“This pain has nothing to teach you,” Iroh said softly. Zuko turned his face away.

“Do you want me to keep reading to you?”

“No. Leave me alone. Please.”

Iroh gave Zuko’s hair one last soothing stroke, then did as he was told.

Back in the break room, everyone was sitting in grim silence. Iroh sat down heavily.

“I had hoped I might be able to sleep in my own bed tonight, since he seemed to be out of danger—and get out of your hair,” he added with a wry half-smile at Riu. “But now…”

“I’ve been the palace doctor for ten years,” said Riu. “I knew how stubborn and arrogant royal patients could be. But I don’t think I’ve seen one be so recklessly self-destructive.”

Iroh thought of Lu Ten’s insistence that he didn’t want special treatment for being a prince, that he wanted to be deployed to the front with the rest of his unit. He said nothing, just hummed sympathetically.

“He’s going to take a decade off my lifespan if he keeps up like this. I could feel twenty more hairs turn white just in the past five minutes.” He ran his fingers through the snow-on-obsidian hair in front of his topknot.

“Why do you think I look the way I do?” Iroh said dryly. They shared a rueful chuckle.

A pause, then Riu’s eyes widened. “You don’t think he would…?”

Iroh’s heart stuttered. “I don’t think so,” he said doubtfully.

“Shit.” Riu shot an urgent look at his assistants. Both started to rise, but Shun was faster to stand up, grab a ring of keys from a hook on the wall, and walk through the door into the infirmary.

“What are you doing,” said Zuko’s flat voice.

“Tidying up,” came Shun’s softer voice. There were quiet sounds of cabinet doors opening and closing, glass and metal objects being set down, keys turning in locks.

“You’re locking away all the drugs and sharp things so I can’t get to them,” Zuko said, sullen and accusing.

“That too,” Shun said evenly, after a pause.

“I could walk out the door and find a blade easily if I wanted to.”

 _You wouldn’t get far,_ she didn’t say, though it must have occurred to her. “You’re not our prisoner,” she agreed.

Zuko fell silent. The sounds of ‘tidying up’ continued.

“Do you need anything?” Shun asked kindly when she had finished. “Are you hungry?”

“No,” Zuko said sharply. Then, softer: “Not yet.” A peace offering, of sorts—in return, perhaps, for Shun’s honesty.

She came back into the break room and handed the ring of keys to Riu, who put them in a pocket of his robes. He sighed heavily and rubbed his forehead, then his eyes.

Iroh rested his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands. Four and a half days of grief, fear, and horror weighed on him, and he could bear up no longer. He started weeping softly, not caring that he was not alone, that four social inferiors could see this outpouring of emotion—unmanly, and unprincely.

No one spoke. After minute or so, Iroh felt a gentle hand on his upper arm. It stayed for another minute while he wept. He looked up, expecting to see Shun, the most instinctively compassionate of them, offering this comfort. Instead he saw that it was Riu, his mouth clenched into a tight, pained line, his eyes squeezed shut behind his misted glasses.

Zuko did eat, finally, before the assistants’ shift change. When the night shift came in, Mawar looked around at the empty counters and asked, “Where is everything?”

“They didn’t trust me with access to chemicals and knives,” Zuko said bitterly before Riu could answer.

Both of them looked alarmed. “Um… what happened?” Sung Hyun asked slowly, scanning Zuko’s body for new wounds and then the room for signs of disaster.

“Come in the back and I’ll explain,” Riu said quickly.

“What the _fuck_ was he thinking?” Mawar asked after Riu had filled them in. “Begging your pardon, Your Highness,” she said hurriedly to Iroh.

He waved off her apology. “Perfectly understandable.”

“He seems to think he needs to prove his strength or courage by refusing pain treatment,” Riu told her. “‘A Fire Lord shouldn’t need it,’ he said.”

“I don’t think that’s the only reason,” Iroh said heavily. “You two weren’t at the Agni Kai…”

Realization dawned on Riu’s face. “Fucking hells,” he breathed.

“Before his fa— the Fire Lord burned him, he said, ‘You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.’ I fear Zuko took those words to heart.”

Mawar swore again, and Sung Hyun took in a hissing breath through his teeth.

“What should we do?” Sung Hyun asked Riu. “If we can’t trust him to report his pain truthfully…”

“We’ll just have to keep the dosing on a schedule. I don’t like it either,” he said when Mawar made a face. “But we can keep an eye on his behavior to make sure we’re not over-medicating. I’ll pull back if he seems too drowsy or incoherent during the day.”

With unease hanging heavy in the air, they proceeded about their evening routines. Zuko maintained that he no longer needed an escort in the bathroom, so Sung Hyun just helped him out of bed and waited outside the closed door, listening for any indication of trouble.

When Zuko was back in bed for the night, Iroh resumed his place on the cushions that Riu’s assistants had provided for him beside the bed, intending to sleep there again. But Zuko opened his eye and said, “Go away, Uncle.”

Iroh wasn’t completely sure what Zuko resented him for, but he sighed and accepted the dismissal. He pressed a hand briefly to his nephew’s head, then returned to the doctors’ break room.

“Do you want the first shift on the futon?” Riu asked, gesturing toward the small room off to the side.

“What about you?”

“I took a nap when the prince was sleeping this morning, while you were out. I’ll be all right for the next few hours.”

“Thank you, doctor,” said Iroh.

The futon was much more comfortable than the floor beside Zuko’s bed, and Iroh was bone-weary, but he still struggled to find rest. They had only two and a half days before Zuko had to be on a ship. And after that… the days and years stretched out before him, bleak and terrible. How long before Zuko was healed? How much would he prolong his own suffering by refusing the treatment, nourishment, and rest he needed to heal? Would he keep venting his misery, rage, and resentment on his uncle, on the crew?

A treacherous voice in his mind whispered that this didn’t have to be his burden. _If not mine, then whose?_ he challenged it. _I have lost a son; he desperately needs a father._

 _He is_ my _hope for redemption. And if that proves to be as cruel an illusion as the hope of capturing the Avatar is for him? We will be in the same boat, in more ways than one._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone did actually come up with the idea of intravenous saline injections to treat hypovolemic shock in the 1830s, so I figure it's fair game for the Fire Nation.
> 
> I came up with the "snow-on-obsidian" thing as an alternative to "salt and pepper," which doesn't quite fit the setting.
> 
> Seriously, there will only be one more chapter of this. Which is a prologue to the actual AU. Which I hope will be better about not detailing every minute of every day?
> 
> ETA 15 June: Yeah, maybe don't believe anything I say about chapter counts.


	3. Days 5-6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iroh and Ohta go to the library; Zuko goes to feed the turtle-ducks; Iroh shares some wisdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that in more than 15,000 words, Iroh had not yet spoken in Proverb. This had to be fixed.

Zuko’s slight feverishness turned out not just to be his body’s response to the stress of untreated pain. During the night it became clear that infection had returned, as Zuko tossed with fitful fevered sleep, soaked his thin robe with sweat, and muttered to himself in unquiet dreams.

Iroh woke in the middle of the night to hear unexpected commotion from the infirmary. The doctor and his assistants had removed Zuko’s old bandages, hours before he would normally be due to have his dressings changed, and the fluid that stained them was a sickly greenish yellow with pink traces of diluted blood. The swelling on the left side of his face had worsened again, and the wounds were streaked with angry red.

“He cannot leave like this,” Riu hissed at Iroh, looking up from the careful work of cleaning the weeping, inflamed flesh. Zuko moaned and twitched against the hands that held his head still; if they had given him enough opium to render him unconscious, it had not yet had time to take effect.

“He has no choice,” said Iroh, closing his eyes against his own pain.

“I’ll— I’ll just keep him here. I’ll tell them it’s—medically impermissible to allow him to leave. I would be violating my oath as a doctor.”

“Then they will throw him in prison, and you with him.”

“Maybe— maybe that’s better. There’s an infirmary in the prison…”

Iroh shook his head. “The deepest cells, that’s what the decree threatened. The ones without windows. It’s cruel enough for any living creature, but for a firebender…” It was like the suspended cages in dried-out warehouses where the Southern waterbenders had been kept.

“He’ll die. Without proper treatment, proper rest, he’ll die.” Riu’s eyes were frantic and red-rimmed behind his glasses; days of poor sleep had taken their toll on him.

“He won’t,” Iroh promised, again with that strange calm certainty. “He is strong. He will fight.” _Never give up without a fight:_ for better or worse, the motto on the knife that Iroh had given him—surrendered by a general at Ba Sing Se, that great city which had fought so fiercely and never given up—had become the principle by which Zuko lived. He doubted that the gift had anything to do with it, however; it was an instinct that ran far deeper in the blood of both Fire Lord and Avatar in Zuko’s veins.

“How can you be so sure?” Riu half-demanded, half-pleaded.

“I have spent time in the Spirit World,” Iroh said, which was true. “I have some knowledge of the future,” he continued, which was not (beyond the knowledge everyone could claim that the sun would rise the next morning, and that their feet would not float off the ground).

Riu’s eyes narrowed. “You did not know that his father would do _this_ ,” he said accusingly. He was edging very close to treason; it was fortunate that no one who cared could hear him.

“No. The knowledge I am granted is limited, and unpredictable. But I have known things I should not have been able to know, and in just that way, I know that he will not die for some time yet.”

Riu’s brow furrowed. He seemed torn between skepticism and the desperate desire to believe. From behind Riu, where he could not see her, Mawar gave Iroh a hard _I know you’re full of shit but you’re lucky I’m not going to say anything_ look (simply _‘You’re lying’_ would not have captured the nuances of that look; it definitely had profanity in it).

When they finished re-bandaging, Iroh told Riu to go sleep, and he would stay with Zuko. Riu, who looked as if he might fall asleep standing like an ostrich-horse, nodded and staggered toward the back room.

Zuko had gone still, with the slow, shallow breathing characteristic of the opium-sleep. Iroh put a hand to his right cheek and could feel that he was burning with fever again.

“I’ve heard about patients making miraculous recoveries if they truly believe they’ll get well,” Mawar said quietly from the other side of the bed. “Patients who live for years with a cancer that should have killed them in a month. It presents doctors with a dilemma. Should we tell the truth about the prognosis given by the best of our knowledge? Or should we tell an optimistic lie in the hope that it might make things better? Should we _believe_ an optimistic lie—the better to lie to our patients, or to keep ourselves from despair?”

Iroh met her eyes, bright and hard as bronze (the same color as Azula’s, but with none of her coldness). “The flower-arranger selects some blooms but not others, trims their leaves and stems, and places them alongside others that will best bring out their vibrancy and grace. Is she lying about flowers?”

Mawar narrowed her eyes. “Flower-arrangers don’t construct entirely new flowers.”

“But the best of them may seem to—so different do they look in the arrangement than alone.”

“Then maybe they _are_ lying about flowers,” she said with a stubbornness that reminded Iroh strongly of Zuko. Or Lu Ten.

“You may find as you grow older that it is impossible to cultivate flowers without a certain amount of arranging.”

“Maybe I prefer wildflowers.”

“That, too, may change with age.”

She shook her head impatiently. “I’m not even sure what we’re talking about anymore,” she said, once again reminiscent of Zuko. “Excuse me, Your Highness,” she said, somewhat brusquely, and went to join her colleagues in the back room.

Iroh soon nodded off again with his back leaning against the wall. His dreams were fitful snatches of anxious scenes, drawn haphazardly from every part of his life. The last few days in the infirmary, watching Zuko fight for his life, were interwoven with battlefield decisions, tense war room meetings (he had to stop someone from speaking, who was it?), training as a soldier and an officer, lessons with stern pitiless tutors in firebending and preparing to rule the nation. If he could just keep the flame from reaching the edge of the leaf, someone who depended on him would be all right…

Zuko’s voice broke into his shallow, restless sleep. “Who are you?” he asked, the words slightly slurred by clumsy lips and tongue.

“It's your Uncle Iroh,” he said. It had been days since Zuko had woken and not recognized him; Iroh feared that the fever was even worse now than before.

But Zuko’s eye wasn’t open, he realized. He was talking in his sleep. As if to demonstrate that beyond doubt, he said, “Why’re you in a tree?”

After a pause for his invisible addressee to respond, he said, “That wasn't very nice of her.” Then, sagely, “Sisters can be like that.”

Another pause, then, “I want to help you,” said Zuko.

Iroh waited for him to say more, but that was all; Zuko’s dreams had taken him elsewhere. He murmured unintelligibly and resettled—onto his right side, fortunately. Sung Hyun stepped into the room to investigate the sounds, but saw that Zuko was still sleeping (relatively) peacefully. Iroh nodded at him that all was well, and the young man (who still had not quite adjusted to the constant presence of such an august personage) ducked his head and disappeared again.

_Day Six_

Zuko woke with the sunrise, still feverish but even more restless and energetic than he had been the day before. He submitted grudgingly to a dose of two drops of tincture of opium; he finished the bowl of soup he was given for breakfast, but slowly and with much disgruntled poking at chunks of carrot and pig-chicken.

After he finished the soup, Sung Hyun handed him a cup of tea, which he regarded with great suspicion. “What is this?”

“Willow bark and honey.”

He sniffed at it, wrinkled his nose, then took a cautious sip. “Eugh,” he said. “Needs more honey.”

Sung Hyun took the cup back into the break room to adjust it to his demanding customer’s satisfaction. Zuko drank the ( _barely_ , he grumbled) improved tea with a lot of dramatic grimacing.

As soon as that was done, he asked for (demanded) paper and brush to make a list of materials to be acquired from the library. He was persuaded to dictate the list and let Iroh do the actual writing—Zuko’s calligraphy was inconsistent under normal circumstances, but writing with only one eye? Ohta might not even be able to read it.

His eye fever-bright, his cheeks flushed (what could be seen beneath the bandages), and vibrating with manic energy, he rattled off ideas faster than Iroh could write them down; he had to be asked to stop, slow down, repeat what he had said. He needed information on the Air Nomads, of course, on how to get up to the Air Temples without a flying bison. Any information on continued searches for the Avatar after the attacks on the Temples, and anywhere surviving Air Nomads had been found. Information on their customs, language, typical stature and facial features—how to identify one who might be in disguise, living among the people of another Nation. He needed to know about airbending techniques, about how to counter an attack from an airbending master. ( _They didn’t really ‘attack,’_ Iroh refrained from commenting.) Everything about the Avatar—all documentation of the cycle, exceptions to the usual pattern, the lifespans of past Avatars, extraordinary powers, especially while in the Avatar State…

“We’ve only been promised a _small_ ship, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said with cautious humor. “We can’t take the entire library with us.”

“I know that!” Zuko didn’t quite shout, but said more loudly and sharply than necessary.

“This will probably be quite enough for Ohta to be getting on with,” said Iroh, looking over what he’d written.

“But I don’t know if that’s all I’ll need! How do Avatars choose their bending masters? I might be able to find the Avatar by finding his firebending or earthbending teacher…”

“Zuko… if the Avatar is alive, he would be over a hundred years old. His teachers would likely have been older than him.”

“But what if he’s been reincarnated into the Water Tribe now? We don’t know how old he or she would be!”

Iroh didn’t bother to explain why it was unlikely that there was a Water Tribe Avatar alive somewhere; Zuko either already knew, or would understand soon enough. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.

“Fine. That’s enough for now. But if I think of something else…”

“I will write it down and pass it along.”

When Ohta looked at the list, she raised an eyebrow and asked, “How much room for books and scrolls will you have on your ship…?”

Zuko scowled and said “Enough” just as Iroh was saying “Not that much.”

Ohta raised both eyebrows. “Well… there’s probably a little bit of information about these topics in a variety of sources. I can copy down what I find in books that are mostly about something else, but…”

“But I only have two days. Less!”

“I can help you,” Iroh said. He was reluctant to leave Zuko’s side, especially for a task that he was quite certain was pointless. But Zuko was already poisoned with hope; the best Iroh could give him for now was some temporary peace of mind.

“I wouldn’t have thought of you as the type for archival research,” Ohta remarked to Iroh as they made their way along the halls to the palace’s library. “Begging your pardon, Your Highness.”

“Understandable. My reputation is as a man of action… though perhaps my physique has grown to undermine that reputation.” Iroh patted his belly and chuckled. “I have become more contemplative in recent years. And I have always loved the written word.”

“Finding things in indifferently organized libraries is a bit different from reading for pleasure,” she pointed out cautiously.

“Ah, but I have visited the greatest and most indifferently organized library of them all! And it is emphatically a non-borrowing library, so I have had to test my note-taking skills…”

Ohta frowned in puzzlement. “Not the University of Ba Sing Se? How in Agni’s name did you get in…?”

“Alas, I was not able to visit the world’s _second-_ greatest library—whose organizational system, I am sure, is impeccable. Someday, I hope! No, the _greatest_ library in the world is Wan Shi Tong’s.”

Ohta’s mouth fell open. “But… I thought that was just a spirit tale. I mean—obviously it’s a spirit tale—but, just a myth. Not a real place.”

“Unless my visit there was only a pleasant dream or a very coherent hallucination, I can attest that it is a real place. And in any case my notes are quite real! Even if their source may be illusory.”

“Wan Shi Tong’s library,” Ohta repeated with awe and envy. “However did you _find_ it?”

“A combination of good luck and persistence. Which, in the end, is the only way anyone has ever found anything.”

Ohta looked unsatisfied with this answer, but didn’t pursue it further.

Searching in the library was a pleasantly meditative experience, as long as Iroh didn’t think too hard about why he was looking for information on those particular topics. He set aside the books that had a lot to say about the Avatar or the Air Nomads and copied out the relevant passages from those that said only little. The librarian had squinted suspiciously when he politely requested writing materials for this purpose, and acquiesced with a grudgingness that Iroh suspected had little to do with the content of the request and much more to do with the fact that someone had the temerity to bother him.

The librarian’s suspicious squint was undoubtedly more warranted when Iroh and Ohta presented the books they wished to ‘borrow’ (under Iroh’s name, of course; as a prince, he had a right to the contents of the royal library). He carefully noted down their titles and authors and the shelves from which they had been taken. Iroh assured him that he understood they must be returned as soon as possible, and no later than a year and a day hence. The librarian could hardly chase him down with overdue notices if he was on a ship halfway around the world.

After picking up some cold food from the kitchens (it was long past the midday meal), Iroh and Ohta returned to the infirmary. Zuko was sleeping again—truly sleeping, not sedated; he must have burned through his earlier burst of energy. Iroh wondered, with a surge of indulgent fondness, what kind of grief he had been giving Riu and Shun before he wore himself out. Iroh put an affectionate hand to his cheek and could feel that it was still too warm.

While Zuko was sleeping, a groom was helped in from the stables by two companions, his arms supported across their shoulders as he favored one leg. He was the first member of palace staff to come in in the five days Iroh had been here. He wondered whether injury and illness were usually so infrequent, or if everyone was avoiding the infirmary and trying to handle minor ailments on their own because they knew that Zuko was still here, recovering from the terrible wounds inflicted by the Fire Lord. Iroh reflected that it was better that they stayed away, out of pity or fear, than flocked here to gawk at the maimed, disgraced, soon-to-be banished prince.

The groom, Goro, had been kicked by a dragon-moose and his ankle was broken. Riu treated his pain only with strong willow bark tea and brandy, not with opium. He whimpered quietly while Riu was setting the bone and Ohta and Shun splinted and wrapped it; Zuko stirred and muttered at the sound, but didn’t wake. The doctors gave the groom some sort of herbal decoction to help him sleep in spite of the pain. While reclining with his leg propped on a pillow, waiting for it to take effect, Goro kept casting furtive looks at the boy lying in a restless fever-sleep on the other side of the room, his face mostly concealed in bandages. Iroh could hardly blame him, but he was very glad Zuko was still asleep.

By the time Zuko woke later in the afternoon, the other patient was asleep. Zuko looked over at him curiously, and Iroh explained. “So that’s the kind of incident you usually deal with,” Zuko said dryly to Riu, who had come to administer the next round of his pain relief regimen.

“Yes. On a normal day we’ll get one or two injuries, usually not as severe as that. Knife mishaps from the kitchen, scalded laundry maids, guards in training accidents, children who have hurt themselves playing. We’re busiest when an illness is going around… or if there’s been a very severe accident.”

 _Usually involving fire,_ Iroh suspected. They must have seen burns as severe as Zuko’s, if not worse. _But usually they were accidents._

Zuko was still feverish, but he insisted that he was tired of lying in bed and wanted to take a walk. Iroh looked to Riu, whose expression was hesitant but not forbidding. “Perhaps we can take a little stroll outside. To the turtle-duck pond, for example?” He knew that was a place Zuko had liked to spend time with Lady Ursa. In the years since her disappearance, he still spent time there alone, talking to the turtle-ducks, or to himself, or maybe to his mother’s ghost.

Zuko’s face lit up at the suggestion. “ _Please_ , doctor.”

Riu sighed. “Fine. But _bring him straight back_ if there’s any trouble. Get a guard to carry him if you have to.”

“I won’t need to be _carried!”_ Zuko objected, at the same time that Iroh protested, “I could carry him myself, if it came to that!” Zuko glared at him. Riu looked intensely skeptical.

“Let’s go to the kitchen to get some bread for the turtle-ducks,” Iroh said to Zuko.

“Bread isn’t good for them,” Zuko declared, already pushing himself up on shaky legs. Shun darted over to stabilize him, if necessary.

“Oh? What should they eat, then?” Iroh asked, trying not to sound worried as he watched Zuko attempt to stand.

“One of the assistant cooks has a mix of uncooked grains and sunflower seeds to feed them.” Zuko was still trembling slightly but otherwise steady on his feet as he took a few steps toward the door. Iroh stayed a small step behind him, ready to support him at any moment.

Zuko looked down at himself. “I need shoes,” he remarked. “Should I be wearing real clothes?”

“We still have your trousers from… a few days ago,” said Shun. “And I think we have some spare slippers. Let me check.”

She went into the back room and fetched them. Zuko insisted that he didn’t need help dressing; nonetheless, Shun stood right outside the door to the bathroom while he did. He emerged slightly shakier, after longer than it should have taken to put on trousers.

In the halls, passing guards and servants stared a little too long at Zuko’s bandaged face before quickly lowering their eyes and bowing. Zuko’s posture was tense, his gaze defiant. When they reached the kitchen, he ignored the stares, the mouths open in horror or pity, and asked for Assistant Cook Emi.

Emi was a homely middle-aged woman who looked like the universal image of a mother. Iroh was probably about the same age—perhaps even older—but he still felt like she could have been his mother. She probably gave sublime hugs.

Her eyes widened when she saw Zuko, but she was quick to smile warmly and bow. “Prince Zuko! Are they not feeding you enough? You know I’d never let that stand…”

Obviously she meant it as a joke, but Zuko did look uncomfortably thin—not only from the last few days, but from a recent growth spurt. Iroh worried that years of ships’ rations could only make the situation worse.

“I’m getting food for the turtle-ducks, not for myself,” Zuko said, returning her smile—a rare sight since Zuko had awoken; a rare enough sight in the months since Iroh had returned to the palace.

“Ah, of course! Wait here, Your Highness.”

Emi disappeared into one of many storage rooms that branched off from the kitchen and returned with a jar of the mix of grains and seeds Zuko had described. She poured some into a bowl and handed it to him with another little bow. He returned the bow, even though it was not required.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “For everything you’ve always done for me.”

“Oh, nonsense,” she said brightly, though her eyes were moist.

“Goodbye, Emi,” said Zuko. The time span he meant was ambiguous.

“Just bring the bowl back, do you hear?” Iroh had the distinct feeling she wasn’t talking about the bowl.

Zuko sniffled a few times on their way out to the courtyard. Iroh pretended not to hear.

There was a stone bench beside the pond for visitors to sit and watch the turtle-ducks. Zuko ignored it and knelt on the grass right beside the water. Iroh knelt alongside him.

The turtle-ducks swam toward Zuko, quacking eagerly, as soon as they saw him, before he had scattered any grain into the water. He chuckled fondly at their impatience. “Yes, yes, I’m here to feed you…”

Iroh scattered a few handfuls of the grain mix himself, but mostly watched Zuko. He talked to the turtle-ducks as if they could understand him, scolding some for being greedy and pushing others out of the way. He had given them names based on distinguishing features: one whose feathers were an especially bright yellow was Sunshine; another with an odd tuft of feathers on its head was Cowlick; a third whose wing had been injured and dragged in the water was Lefty.

“I’m going to be gone for a while,” he said with a hiccup in his voice. “I won’t be around to feed you. I know Emi will take care of you, though. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. But I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

One of the ducks waddled up out of the water to poke at Zuko’s hand with its beak, looking to get first crack at the next handful of seeds. “Yes, all right, Nosy. I spoil you, don’t I? I’m just encouraging this behavior by giving in to your shameless bullying.”

How had Zuko turned out so completely opposite to his father and sister? It was a mystery Iroh didn’t think he would ever understand. No wonder Zuko had already gotten himself banished from the court: he had never belonged here in the first place. It was a place for eagle-hawks and buzzard-wasps, not turtle-ducks.

“All right, that’s enough,” Zuko admonished Nosy after he (or she?) had eaten all the grain out of his palm. “Go on, you’ll get too fat and you’ll sink.” He gave the bird a gentle nudge; it squawked indignantly and waddled away with a wounded air to lie down in the sun and take a nap.

“That’s right, sleep it off.” Zuko chuckled, then sniffed. “I’ll miss you, you fat spoiled beggar. All of you.”

Zuko hadn’t let himself cry since he had learned of his banishment. He was still trying not to, but he was losing the struggle. He let out a sudden errant sob and put a hand over his mouth.

“It’s all right, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said gently. “No one will see.”

“No one except you,” Zuko pointed out. “And them,” he added, tilting his head toward the ducks.

“We don’t count,” Iroh said.

“You won’t think I’m weak?” He sniffed again, and his voice was choked and dangerously close to cracking.

“That is the _last_ thing I would think of you.”

Another sob escaped, then Zuko stopped trying to hold them back and they poured out in a rush, interspersed with cries of pain.

“Zuko? What is it?”

He put a hand to the bandages over his left eye. “It burns. I can’t— it burns.” He sobbed again, then bent over, elbows propped on his knees, hands over his bandaged face.

_Of course. You old fool—you told him it was all right? Ozai took everything from him, and now he won’t even let him mourn his loss._

“I’m sorry,” said Iroh, putting an arm over Zuko’s shoulders.

“Serves me right,” said Zuko, voice muffled in his palms. “I _am_ weak. I don’t want to be weak… like you,” he added with unexpected venom. He looked up, and his one visible eye was rimmed with red and full of resentful accusation. “Father wants me to learn to be strong.” _And suffering will be your teacher._

Iroh sighed. “There are many ways to be strong. The way of the lion is not the only one.”

“And you want me to be strong in the way of the koala-sheep?” Zuko sneered. The expression looked foreign on his face, which was made for sunshine and brief storms of anger, not for these lowering clouds of contempt.

“The deep-rooted tree provides shelter to many creatures and harms none, but cannot be moved by the wildest winds or the strongest elephant’s tusks.”

“Well, I’m not a tree!” The sneer had given way to a more familiar stubborn frustration. “I can’t be a tree! But maybe I can be a lion. I _should_ be a lion… no, a dragon.”

“A dragon is not a mindless predator.”

“It’s not a vegetarian, either.”

“No.” Iroh gave his nephew a long, thoughtful look. “There is a time to be fierce and a time to be gentle.” _And there are times when one must be fierce in order to be gentle—but he already knows. That’s how we’ve ended up here._

“What am I supposed to do with _that?”_ Zuko was almost shouting now. It was easier for him to cover his grief with anger, and for now Iroh thought it best to let him: it was an anesthetic while the pain was still unbearable, though it could be as hard to let go of as opium, or hope. “How am I supposed to know when it’s time for what?”

Of course, Iroh couldn’t _tell_ him that he already knew, that his wisdom was what Ozai had punished: Zuko would reject it as treason, and probably forbid Iroh from sailing with him. “It is something you will learn with time,” was all he could say.

“So you can’t really teach me anything. I just have to get old and learn it for myself.”

“I can teach you to be patient, and to resist the false certainties of youth.”

Zuko scoffed. “‘Be patient, you don’t know anything, and you won’t until you’re old.’ Anything else?”

Iroh considered it for a moment. “I can teach you how to breathe fire.”

Zuko blinked. “You can do _what?”_

“Why do you think they call me the Dragon of the West?”

“I thought… I thought it was because you hunted and killed the last dragon.”

 _Oh yes… that old lie._ “There is that. But that’s not the only reason.”

“Does Father know you can breathe fire?”

“Yes.”

“Can _Father_ breathe fire?”

“Not when last I checked.”

Zuko looked delighted at the thought of learning a technique that even the Fire Lord had not mastered—then he caught himself having that unpatriotic feeling and tamped it down. “How does it work?”

“It requires extraordinary control over your breath, and the connection between your breath and your chi.”

Zuko’s face fell. “So you’re going to make me do breathing exercises for the next ten years?”

Iroh chuckled. “You will be doing breathing exercises for the rest of your life” (Zuko looked aghast at that); “I still do breathing exercises every morning and evening” (he looked cautiously relieved). “But I expect you’ll be able to use the breath of fire to warm yourself within three or four months.”

“But not actually breathe fire?” Zuko looked disappointed again.

“To light a candle? Maybe in a year. To breathe fire with enough range and power to use as a weapon? That will take many years.”

“How many?” Zuko pressed.

“That depends on how diligent you are about your breathing exercises.”

Zuko scowled at him and Iroh smiled back indulgently, which only made Zuko scowl harder.

Iroh glanced up at the sun, which was declining in the sky. “We should return to the infirmary; it will soon be time for supper.”

“More soup. Hooray.”

“You should let the doctors know if you are ready for more substantial food. I’m sure they would be delighted.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Zuko said vaguely.

Back at the infirmary (after dutifully remembering to return the bowl to the kitchen), they found the injured groom awake and eating dinner sitting up in bed. His eyes widened when he saw Zuko come in, then he hurriedly half-bowed, dropping some rice on himself in the process, and mumbled “Your Highness.” Zuko nodded stiffly.

Zuko did not protest being served soup again, but he did ask if he could eat it at the table with Iroh and the staff instead of in bed, a place he was now thoroughly sick of being confined. For once, Riu was happy to accede to the request.

Zuko was a sullen, mostly silent presence at the table. The conversation was unusually hushed and tentative around him. Zuko must have noticed, too, because he was glaring around him, hunched defensively. After about twenty minutes he straightened abruptly, shoulders back in a soldier’s posture, and said, “Stop acting like I’m— like I’m made of glass and I’ll shatter if you talk too loud. Or like I’m on my deathbed.”

Riu and Ohta both flinched at that word; they had spent much of the past five days fearing, or all but certain, that he was. Yi Min looked down in shame. Shun, interestingly, did neither.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” she said, quiet but steady, as always. “We’re all worried about you.”

“Fine, but… maybe don’t express it by acting like you’re already at my funeral.”

No one quite knew what to say to that. Yi Min brightly offered everyone jasmine tea and mochi, including Zuko. He took a small, cautious bite of the mochi and chewed it slowly and thoroughly before swallowing… then smiled and took the next bites more eagerly. He even asked for a second piece.

A little later in the evening, Goro’s brother Saburo came to collect him. Zuko gritted his teeth through another uncomfortable round of horrified staring and hurried bowing. Riu gave the brothers some instructions for caring for the injured leg, a wooden crutch, and a packet of willow bark for tea.

“I wish you a quick and easy recovery,” Iroh said to the groom before he left. “As do I,” Zuko added stiltedly after Iroh gave him a significant glance.

Saburo’s jaw dropped. Goro stammered his thanks, and had to be stopped from attempting to bow while leaning on a crutch. “I wish the same to you, Your Highness,” he said to Zuko, all but tripping over his words. “With all my heart.”

A smile flitted over Zuko’s lips. “Thank you,” Iroh said on his behalf. They all knew the wish was vain, but Iroh appreciated it all the same.

Riu wanted to change the dressings on Zuko’s burns again before he slept; it had been not quite twenty-four hours since the emergency change had revealed renewed infection. The doctor approached his patient with the black vial, but instead of obediently opening his mouth for it, Zuko asked in a tone of challenge, “How much are you going to give me?”

Riu sighed; he knew he should have expected this. “Enough to make you sleep.”

“Why?” Zuko demanded. “I was awake when you changed my bandages yesterday morning.”

“That was before the infection returned—and it was unpleasant enough even then. It will be more painful now that the wounds are inflamed again.”

“And what should I do when my bandages need changing on the ship? Let myself be put to sleep, abandon my command?”

Riu closed his eyes, sending up a silent prayer for strength and patience. “Agni willing, the infection will have retreated by then.”

“But what if it hasn’t? What if it flares up again?”

Riu shot a guilty look toward Iroh; apparently Zuko had overheard more of their expressions of worry and alarm than they had intended. “I’ll leave that to the judgment of the ship’s doctor—and so should you,” he added sternly.

“How do I know I can trust them?”

Once again, Zuko knew or suspected more than he should have, probably more than he would admit if asked directly: he knew, as Iroh did, that his crew would be the Navy’s castoffs, the incompetents or malcontents that his father wouldn’t mind diverting from his war to a wild chicken-goose chase.

“I have sent a hawk to a friend of mine—the doctor I trained under when I had just finished medical school. He used to be a Navy doctor, but retired a few years ago.”

“And he has agreed to come out of retirement for… a voyage of uncertain duration?” Iroh asked.

“I impressed upon him the importance of the task. He was most enthusiastic about the opportunity to travel with _you_ , General.”

“Indeed? Then I am flattered—and grateful.”

Zuko still looked skeptical, though Iroh wasn’t certain what it was about: the retired doctor’s capability, his eagerness to meet his boring old uncle, or the characterization of the ‘task’ as important. Iroh knew, however, that Riu did not mean the task of hunting the Avatar.

“Great, I can trust my doctor. I still want to be awake.” He turned toward Iroh, appealing for support. “I don’t want to keep taking that stuff any longer than necessary. I don’t want to become dependent on it.”

Another thing Zuko shouldn’t have known… but apparently the knowledge had spread beyond the battlefield, perhaps brought back by soldiers whose injuries left them unable to return to the fight, who knew the danger firsthand.

“I understand,” Iroh said quietly.

Riu took that to mean that he had lost. He sighed. “Fine. But I’m still giving you the usual dose.”

“Can’t you dilute it in something? It tastes awful,” Zuko complained.

“Then it would just make whatever it’s in taste awful, and there would be more of it to choke down,” Shun reasoned. “Better to wash it down with something else.”

“What—more willow tea? That tastes awful, too.”

“At least it can be improved with honey.”

“Almost… if you put enough in.”

While waiting for the pain treatments to take effect, Iroh resumed reading to Zuko from the book of plays. The voices he used to differentiate the characters were becoming increasingly outlandish; Zuko had stopped objecting and simply shook his head, trying not to smile. Iroh counted it a great victory when Zuko let out a giggle before quickly biting his lip to stifle it.

Mawar and Sung Hyun arrived to relieve Ohta and Shun, who bowed before taking their leave. Iroh inclined his head in gratitude to them, and after a pause, Zuko did the same.

After ten or fifteen minutes, Riu decided that the medicines had had enough time to work, and he and his assistants started unlocking cabinets and pulling out the necessary supplies: scissors, gauze, ointments, the scalpels he had used to lance abscesses and cut away dead skin and eschar, the razor that kept his hair clear of the wounds. Zuko watched the process with a sour look and a clenched jaw; the precaution of keeping supplies locked away was still a sore point with him.

Iroh closed the book, stood, and stepped away from the bed to give the medics space, but Riu looked over at him and said, “You’re welcome to keep reading.”

“It won’t distract you?”

“No, but it might help distract him, which could only be a good thing.”

Zuko didn’t try to protest that he didn’t want or need a distraction, so Iroh took the invitation to sit down again (at a greater distance) and continue reading… though he stopped trying to make Zuko laugh, which might interfere with the doctors’ work. Iroh found himself grateful that reading kept _him_ distracted from Zuko’s gasps and whimpers.

“You don’t have to stay here again,” Zuko said as Iroh prepared to spend another night on the mats beside his bed. “I’ll be all right. Go sleep in a comfortable bed for once.”

“Maybe tomorrow night,” said Iroh, recalling last night’s terror. The infection might be receding again for now, but he would not trust that the danger was past until another full day passed without another reversal.

“You should at least take the futon again for part of the night,” Riu urged him.

“Thank you, again.”

No one bothered to wake him, so he slept soundly until just a few hours before dawn. He emerged from the little side room and, with a stab of guilt, spotted Riu asleep at the table in the break room with his head resting on his arms and his glasses perched on his head. Mawar was also sitting at the table, reading from an intimidating medical textbook and taking notes. Iroh gently shook the doctor awake and indicated that the futon was free. He mumbled his thanks and stumbled wearily into the side room.

Mawar quietly remarked, “I considered writing something on his face while he was asleep, but I refrained.”

“The sign that you have reached your first maturity. What would you have written?”

“‘Have you seen my glasses?’, probably. Or maybe ‘If found, return to Yi Min.’”

As if on cue, Riu poked his head back into the room. “Have you seen—”

“They’re on your head,” Mawar said.

Riu reached up and grasped the arms of his glasses. “Oh. Of course.” He pulled them back onto his nose in a smooth, practiced gesture which suggested that this was a frequent occurrence, then closed the door again.

Mawar shook her head and rolled her eyes, and it occurred to Iroh that she could not be more than ten years older than Zuko. “What did you mean by ‘ _first_ maturity’?” she asked.

Iroh chuckled. “Your first maturity is when you learn to refrain from the pranks you would have played as a child. Your second maturity is when you learn to play the pranks you would have refrained from as an adult.”

“I believe that’s more commonly referred to as one’s ‘second childhood.’”

“‘A man’s maturity means finding again the seriousness he had as a child at play.’”

Mawar gave him a skeptical look. “You and your impenetrable proverbs…”

“That one’s not mine,” Iroh admitted. He owed much of his ‘wisdom’ to the philosophers and sages of the Earth Kingdom; he was ashamed of having imagined that an infant power like the Fire Nation, rich in technological savvy but poor in true understanding, had the right to rule it.

“Hmm.” Another pause, then she said, “If he were one of my fellow students instead of my boss, I just would have drawn a dick on his face. Begging your pardon, Your Highness,” she added insincerely, with a conspiratorial smirk.

Iroh laughed. “‘Discretion is the better part of valor,’” he said, this time quoting one of the Fire Nation dramas he had been reading to Zuko, then went out into the main room of the infirmary to check on his nephew.

He was still sleeping—apparently less soundly than Iroh had, because his covers were in disarray and he was periodically muttering, though Iroh could only make out the occasional word (he thought he heard “rug” and “kite,” but Agni only knew what he was talking about). Sung Hyun was sitting half-lotus in the spot that Iroh had vacated, reading the book of plays that he had left on it. He startled when he heard Iroh’s footsteps and quickly jumped up, holding out the book. Iroh took it and thanked him, and he mumbled something in return before scurrying back into the break room.

Iroh straightened out the covers on the bed and tucked them around Zuko’s shoulders, though he knew he would probably throw them off again. He finger-combed his hair back from the right side of his face, which was still bandaged but almost healed, and lightly traced the line where the hair had been shaved back from the left side, then settled against the wall to catch what sleep he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you suspect that the bit with the injured groom was added because I realized that it was unrealistic that no one else in the palace complex needed medical attention in a week, you are entirely correct.
> 
> Yeah, that was a Nietzsche quote toward the end; I couldn't resist. _Beyond Good and Evil_ 94\. I've made him an Earth Kingdom philosopher for the purpose of ATLA fic because [Germans would definitely be earthbenders](https://philosopherking1887.tumblr.com/post/614755086640513024/european-cultures-in-atla-world), though he's an uncharacteristic German. (No, I'm not a Reddit fanboy; I'm an actual professional Nietzsche scholar at a university, and a Jewish woman besides, so I figure I'm allowed.)
> 
> The next AND LAST I SWEAR TO GOD chapter is almost finished because I was trying to put it all in one chapter but it was getting unwieldy.


	4. Days 7-8: Departure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iroh and Zuko make their last preparations to go into exile; Zuko looks in a mirror and shaves his head.

_Day Seven_

Just before sunrise, Iroh was awakened by Zuko’s voice. He was talking in his sleep again, louder and clearer than his earlier barely audible mumbling. “Please, Father,” he said, just as he had said in his nightmare two days before, and in the waking nightmare six days before. “Please. I am your loyal son…”

Iroh couldn’t let the nightmare play out. He shook Zuko’s shoulder to wake him.

“Father?” he asked, disoriented. He hadn’t made that mistake in days.

“No,” said Iroh.

“Uncle,” Zuko realized, before he had to be told. He blinked a few times and struggled to sit up. “Why’d you wake me up? Is something wrong?”

“I just thought you should get back in the habit of waking at dawn. Using drugs to sleep has disrupted your natural cycle.”

“But it’s not sunrise yet, is it?”

“Isn’t it? I thought I sensed the first sunlight,” Iroh lied with his best guileless air.

“Maybe _your_ natural cycle has been disrupted,” Zuko said grumpily.

He asked for rice for breakfast instead of more soup—a hopeful sign—and ate almost all that he was given, though after he had gotten through half the bowl he slowed down and seemed to approach the task of eating with dogged determination rather than eagerness or relish.

Zuko wanted to go out again, this time to his rooms to pack the belongings that he would take with him when he had to sail—tomorrow. He spoke the word on a note of disbelief, and his voice broke over it.

“I will come with you,” Iroh offered.

“No,” Zuko said quickly. “I want to do it by myself.”

“Out of the question,” Riu said, arms folded. “I won’t let you out of this room alone.”

Zuko folded his arms too, looking mutinous. “Can’t you allow me _any_ privacy? I can’t even go to the bathroom without someone listening at the door…”

“I can escort you to your chambers, Your Highness, but I’ll wait outside while you pack your things,” Shun offered.

Zuko pulled his mouth to the side in annoyance. “Fine,” he huffed.

“Just as well,” said Iroh. “I must go to my quarters and pack as well.”

Iroh had a tendency to accumulate objects wherever he went, but there was little he truly valued—not since Lu Ten’s death and his sojourn in the Spirit World. Clothing was a necessity, of course, but only a few things were precious to him: portraits of his wife and son, a favorite teapot that Yu Na had given him before their wedding, a collection of fine tea leaves, a portable pai sho set, his liuqin—because a life in which there was no time for music was not a life worth living. And coin, of course; he had a good amount stowed away for emergencies. Surely this counted.

A messenger found him in his rooms while he was packing. “A ship has come into the harbor. The captain—er, the lieutenant wants to see you.”

It was already a bad sign that the highest-ranking officer on the ship was only a lieutenant, not a captain. Zuko would be the ship’s captain, he supposed, as its commanding officer. A captain at thirteen, without rising through any other ranks… that had to set some sort of record.

At the docks, it was clear which ship was meant for him: it was tiny, dumpy, and shabby, compared to the sleek new battleships and stately merchant ships that surrounded it, with dents and rust spots in its hull and paint peeling from its insignia. _Wani_ , read the peeling characters on the side: the name of a legendary sea dragon, which Iroh thought was overselling the unprepossessing vessel.

A middle-aged man with short dark gray hair, impressive bristly muttonchops, and slightly battered armor waited at the bottom of the gangplank. “General Iroh, sir?” the man greeted him with a salute.

“Retired,” said Iroh, almost as a reflex.

“Lieutenant Jee at your service, sir… Your Highness.” He bowed, just in case. “We were sent here to escort you on your travels.”

“Not so much ‘escort' as ‘transport’… and the travels aren’t entirely mine.”

“Sir?” Jee seemed to have settled on the military title. If it was more comfortable for him, Iroh wouldn’t object.

“Prince Zuko, not I, will be in command of this voyage.”

Jee frowned. “The crown prince? Isn’t he… a bit young? Sir.”

“He is… but the circumstances are unusual. I take it you have not heard of his banishment?”

Jee’s frown deepened. “I’d heard rumors, but I wrote it off as some exaggerated nonsense. No one bothers to tell the junior officers anything…”

“In this case, there was no exaggeration. Prince Zuko has been banished from the Fire Nation, and may only return once he has captured the Avatar.”

“The Avatar,” Jee echoed.

“Yes. So the purpose of our voyage will be to search for the Avatar, at Prince Zuko’s direction.”

“We’re going to search for the Avatar,” Jee repeated. He shifted his weight and his armor creaked quietly, as if to provide incredulous punctuation.

_Tell her to find me an acre of land  
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme…_

“Yes. Where is the rest of the crew, Lieutenant?”

“I’ve given them leave to go out in the city, sir. Some of them have family or friends here in the Capital, and they haven’t been home in some time.”

“Of course.” And they wouldn’t be home again for Agni knew how long.

“Apologies for the impertinence, sir, but if Prince Zuko will be commanding, why have you come to meet me instead?”

“He is still recovering from a serious injury.”

Another frown. “We’re slated to depart tomorrow. Will he be well enough to sail?”

“He will have to be,” Iroh said grimly.

Jee looked alarmed. “I’m afraid the doctor we have on board is… inexperienced.”

Iroh had little doubt that was intentional. Had Ozai himself ordered that the greenest doctor in training be sent on Zuko’s ship? Was he, after all, trying to kill him, if only indirectly? Was he hoping for his own son’s death—praying for it, even? (The voice of rage, burning like hot coals behind his eyes and freezing like black ice in his ribcage, whispered that Iroh knew he was.)

Iroh breathed slowly in and out through his nose. “An experienced Navy doctor has volunteered to come with us.”

“That is good to hear, sir,” Jee said with obvious relief (probably not only for Zuko’s sake, but also for the crew’s).

Iroh looked up at the hull of the ship that loomed above them, as worn and battered as Jee’s armor. “The ship looks like she’s seen better days. Is she seaworthy?”

Jee bristled a little at the question. “She may not be pretty, but she’s strong and faithful. She’s weathered many a storm and she’ll weather many more.”

“You speak about her as you might speak of your wife,” Iroh remarked.

“She might as well be. I’ve been sailing with her for ten years now—as a simple crewman when I started, now as her first mate.”

“But not as her captain.”

“No,” Jee said testily. “Her most recent captain was promoted. I was not.”

Iroh was sure there was a story there, but he would have to get to know Jee much better before he asked. Well, they would have all the time in the world to get to know each other.

He declined the offer of a tour; it wasn’t as if he had the option of turning down this ship for another, and he expected he would become far more familiar with her interior than he wanted to. While he was out in the city, he stopped for lunch at a favorite restaurant; like the crew of the _Wani_ , he had no idea when he would be home again, so he thought he should enjoy the amenities of the Capital while he still could.

He also took the opportunity to acquire gifts for the medical team who had saved his nephew’s life. He arranged to have them all delivered in two days, after he and Zuko had already departed: it was more gracious for the giver to be absent when the gift was received, so that the recipient did not feel required to show (or feign) the appropriate gratitude.

He and Riu had discussed their shared fondness for the subtle, earthy whiskies of Kyoshi Island. There were not enough bottles in the world to cover his debt, so Iroh settled for a symbolic gesture. The elegant shop where he bought wine and liquor was, fortunately, accustomed to accommodating the whims of the wealthy and powerful, so the shopkeeper showed no surprise at Iroh’s request: he paid for eight bottles, the first to be delivered two days hence, then one on the same day every year for the next seven years—one for each of the hellish days that Zuko had been in Riu’s care. For Yi Min, Iroh bought a set of the best cooking pots and pans from the expert metalworkers of Yu Dao—resistant to damage from impact or heat, but sensitive enough to transmit the slightest variation in the heat source.

For Ohta… alas that he could not take any mementos from the library of Wan Shi Tong, but he thought she might appreciate a volume of herblore he had found in a town he had passed through in the northwestern Earth Kingdom. It had interested him mainly for its comprehensive catalogue of varieties of tea (which Iroh had memorized by this point), but most of its pages were devoted to medicinal uses of plants, so he figured that Ohta would get more benefit from it than he would by keeping it. For Mawar—as something of a joke, though he hoped she might benefit from it in earnest—he found a charmingly illustrated book on the principles of flower arrangement and, to start putting the principles into practice, an unevenly shaped vase whose pale green glaze was threaded with dark gray and fine golden cracks: a flaw framed and reinterpreted as deliberate beauty.

He knew almost nothing about Sung Hyun; the shy young man had hardly said two words to him. He had been reading Zuko’s book of drama scripts last night, but it was impossible to say whether that was out of genuine interest or a lack of anything better to do. In the end, Iroh decided to get him an assortment of various kinds of tea. Iroh had no idea whether Sung Hyun was a tea appreciator, but if he wasn’t already, Iroh would be doing him a great favor by making him one.

What to give to Shun, the soft-voiced, steady-eyed lover of animals who seemed to have a way with his nephew, as with a recalcitrant, temperamental puma-goat or ostrich-horse colt? Tea seemed insufficient. Nor did another book seem apt; she was obviously literate, but not a highly educated professional in training like Ohta and Mawar. No, she should have something to reflect the soothing power of her truth-bearing voice. There were legends of the power of music to calm and charm the most dangerous beasts, from snakes to badger-moles to dragons. So for Shun, Iroh went to his favored music shop and bought a slender flute—crafted not from bamboo, as was usual, but from aged, polished rosewood, which was still light enough to carry easily but would not crack or lose its tuning in heat, cold, or humid air. It was probably more expensive than anything else she owned, and he could hardly blame her if she chose to sell it for necessities rather than learn to play… but he hoped she would allow herself a bit of useless luxury.

When Iroh returned to the infirmary, the medics were happy to report that Zuko’s fever had almost entirely abated and that he had successfully kept down solid food for lunch—though not nearly as much as a boy his age should be eating. At the moment Zuko was napping with the book of plays lying open and face-down on his chest; apparently he had tried to read it himself with his one good eye and had worn himself out, or given it up as too difficult. It occurred to Iroh that he could also use a nap, and Riu told him that the futon in the back was free.

Zuko joined them again for dinner. Yi Min had brought a savory noodle soup for everyone so that he could share the entire meal with them. In place of the previous evening’s funereal air, everyone was a little too bright and cheerful, deliberately looking away from the inescapable knowledge that this was Zuko’s last supper in the Fire Nation. Zuko seemed as uncomfortable as he had last night, but tonight he didn’t comment on the mood. He just seemed terribly weary—a weariness that all the sleep in the world could not relieve. He ate slowly, almost dutifully, and spoke slowly and haltingly when he spoke at all.

When the time came to change Zuko’s bandages, he asked for a mirror again. Riu sought Iroh’s eyes and he nodded. They could put it off until tomorrow, but what good would that do? Facing the sight just a few hours before he had to leave could throw him perilously off-balance. Better to give him a night to come to terms with the damage.

Ohta rummaged around in the cabinets, looking for a mirror that Riu insisted was in there somewhere; they didn’t have many occasions to use it, but it did come in useful sometimes (generally for finding injuries inside the mouth, Riu explained). She finally spotted it at the very back of a cabinet, and had to empty nearly everything else out to get to it.

The bandages were carefully unwrapped and some fluid gently dabbed away from the wounds—running yellow or clear, now, not the worrying greenish-white of infection, with scarcely any traces of bleeding. Ohta gave Zuko the little hand mirror and they all waited in silence.

The right side and center of Zuko’s face were almost entirely healed; the new skin was still unusually pink and shiny, but looked dry and whole. But most of the left side was still an open wound, mottled red, pink, and yellow, depending on how deep the layer that was exposed. His eye, surrounded by raw swollen flesh, could still open only a slit; his left ear was misshapen, the lobe partly fused to the side of his face.

“All that will scar?” Zuko asked, his voice choked, transfixed by the gruesome image in the mirror.

“Yes,” said Riu. “I’m sorry, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko’s breathing was ragged, but he knew better now than to let himself weep.

“My hair,” he said thickly.

“It’ll grow back,” Riu assured him. “Except right around the ear, probably.”

“No,” said Zuko. His voice sounded hollow, far away, but strangely calm. “I need to shave it back on both sides. It’s uneven.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Iroh said gently, with cautious humor. “It might make you look like an old man with a receding hairline.” He rubbed a hand ruefully over his own.

Zuko finally tore his gaze away from the mirror and blinked up at his uncle. “All of it,” he said simply, as if it should have been obvious. “All except the tail.”

It was an old custom, after losing an Agni Kai, to shave one’s head in shame, leaving only the topknot—which Zuko was not old enough yet to have. Few still observed the custom now. But then, few were involved in Agni Kais significant enough to result in banishment or permanent scarring.

“Not tonight,” Iroh urged him. “Sleep on it tonight. It can wait until tomorrow.”

Zuko nodded wordlessly, seeming too numb to argue. Shun gently took the mirror from his unresisting fingers before the medics re-applied ointment and fresh bandages. Since the right side of his face was nearly healed, and needed air more than it needed protection, they replaced the gauze wrapped all the way around his face with a pad of folded gauze over the wounds on the left side, secured with another strip of folded fabric around his head.

“My face,” Zuko finally said to Iroh when they were alone. “It will always look like that.”

“It will not always look so terrible,” Iroh said, trying to be comforting.

“But half my face will always be… marked. I’ll wear my worst mistake… my dishonor for everyone to see, for the rest of my life.”

Iroh desperately wanted to tell him that he had made no mistake, that the dishonor was not his, but he had to bite his tongue.

“It’s my _face_ ,” he continued, his strange frozen calm crumbling again into anguish. “It’s what the world sees of me first, how they know me. It’s the first thing everyone will see, the _only_ thing they’ll see.” He put his hands over his bandaged face and coughed out a dry sob. “It’s not _my_ face anymore. It’s just… a wound, a scar. That’s who I am now. That’s _all_ I am now.” He clenched his jaw so hard that Iroh could hear his teeth grinding together, struggling not to let himself cry.

“No, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said softly. “You are still yourself. The people who love you will always see past it.”

“And that’s you and who else?” Zuko asked bitterly.

Iroh didn’t know how to answer. His mother was gone. His father had done this to him. His sister… it was hard to say whether she was still capable of love (or ever had been), or whether Ozai’s teaching had ground it all out of her, along with everything else he considered a weakness.

“Our family is complicated,” Iroh admitted. “But the people around you who get to know you soon learn to love you as well. Emi the cook knows how you love the turtle-ducks, and she loves you for it. The doctors all care deeply for you…”

“It’s their job,” Zuko grumbled.

“It is their job to take care of you, not to _care_. But they do. And there will be others who do, over your whole life. To them, you will not be your scar. You will be your courage, your determination, your generous heart.”

Zuko just looked at him, disbelieving, disconsolate. Iroh took his hand and squeezed it, trying to give what little comfort he could, but Zuko did not return the pressure; his hand lay limp and cold in his uncle’s grasp.

After the night shift arrived, Zuko asked if he could sleep in his own bed for the last time in… he did not know how long. Riu said it would be all right as long as he was not alone. Iroh offered to go with him, but Zuko shook his head. He grudgingly consented to allow Sung Hyun to keep watch, to make sure nothing happened.

“Are you afraid the infection will worsen again?” Zuko asked Riu coldly. “Or are you afraid of something else?” Something Zuko himself might do, he did not have to specify.

“We know that we cannot trust the apparent retreat of infection,” Riu said in clipped tones.

Zuko _hmph_ ed suspiciously but said nothing more about it.

Iroh took the opportunity to spend a last night in a real bed, after spending six nights sleeping poorly sitting on a few cushions or lying on a lumpy futon. And the poor sleep-deprived doctor could finally go home to his wife, while Sung Hyun kept an eye on Zuko, equipped with the bottle of tincture and a strict dosing schedule, and Mawar held down the fort in the infirmary, in case of any other medical emergencies in the palace.

Iroh also had the opportunity to meditate properly, with candles he lit rather than the oil lamps on the wall, for the first time in a week. He did not pray to Agni this time; he tried to empty his mind, to think of nothing. It was almost impossible. His thoughts kept drifting to Zuko, hearing his anguished voice saying _“It’s my_ face _,”_ and _“It’s not_ my _face anymore.”_ Yet another thing his father had stolen from him. The candles flared up violently with Iroh’s surge of fury. Iroh breathed out slowly, for longer than he had breathed in, to bank his fire, to starve his rage of the air it needed to burn hot and destructive. Cool it to embers; let it warm him and wait for the right moment to blow on it and let it flare into life.

_Day Eight: Departure_

The next morning, Iroh took breakfast in his quarters, like a proper prince—another luxury he would have to do without for the foreseeable future. He left his bags in his room—he would send servants for them later (might as well take advantage of that possibility while it was available)—and returned to the infirmary to find Zuko.

When he had gone to see Ozai three days before, he had asked the steward at what hour the Fire Lord’s decree regarding Zuko’s banishment had been issued; it would be enforced at that hour seven days later. Halfway between noon and sunset, said the records: nine hours, by the Earth Kingdom reckoning, after sunrise.

Zuko was eating breakfast with Mawar and Sung Hyun when Iroh arrived (Riu must still have been at home or on his way). He was wearing comfortable travel clothes in the usual red and gold rather than the white hospital robe he’d been wearing for seven days. But most strikingly—horrifyingly, even—he had done what he had threatened: shaved all of his hair save for his phoenix plume, leaving a small ragged patch at its base. His shorn scalp looked pink and irritated, with a few nicks in the skin behind his right ear where the unpracticed hand wielding the razor had slipped.

“Merciful spirits, Zuko…” Iroh began, then thought better of asking _“What have you done?”_

Zuko looked up with the stubborn jut of his jaw that Iroh was becoming all too accustomed to. “I told you I would.”

“Couldn’t you do anything to stop him?” Iroh asked Sung Hyun.

The young man flushed bright red at being addressed, but managed to stammer out, “By the time I thought something was wrong, he had already started.”

“He helped me shave most of it, and told me what to use to keep it from getting too sore or itchy,” Zuko said in Sung Hyun’s defense. He ducked his head, more embarrassed than ever. “We couldn’t figure out what to do about the part around the tail, though,” he said, tracing the uneven line around the shock of long hair he had kept. “He’s only ever shaved facial hair before.”

Iroh sighed. “I believe the custom was to trace a tilted square or diamond shape around the topknot. Something about a life off balance, a reputation needing to be set right… but I suspect it was simply the easiest shape that didn’t look absurd. A proper circle would be much too difficult.”

“Oh. I’ll have to fix it, then.”

“Tomorrow,” Iroh advised him. He didn’t have to remind Zuko that time was running short.

When Riu arrived, he was in animated conversation with an older man whose nearly white hair was cut short and bristly, like Lieutenant Jee’s, and his beard cropped close to his jaw. His craggy, weather-beaten face was the same dark bronze as Mawar’s, pointing to an origin in the southern islands, though his eyes were not bronze, like hers, but gray with a hint of blue.

Riu stopped short when he saw Zuko. “Dear Agni, you actually did it.”

“I keep my word,” Zuko said with that same stubborn air.

“Will you introduce us to your companion, Doctor Riu?” Iroh asked significantly.

“Of course… this is my old teacher and friend, Doctor Tulang.”

“Not _that_ old,” Tulang insisted.

“I apologize—that was ambiguous. I meant my _former_ teacher and solidly middle-aged friend.” Tulang nodded, mollified, and bowed in greeting, a little more sharply and briefly than a veteran of palace life would have. “He is a former Navy doctor who has agreed to come out of retirement to join you on your ship.”

“An old sailor who could not stay away from the sea?” Iroh asked him with a smile.

“Bullshit,” Tulang answered bluntly. “I was looking forward to spending the rest of my life on dry land.”

“Oh! Then why…?”

“Riu asked me a favor. Said it was important.”

“And you were willing to give up your peaceful retirement at his word?”

“He doesn’t ask favors often. I owed him one. And my retirement wasn’t that peaceful anyway. Relatives won’t leave me alone. I was seriously considering faking my death.”

“I imagine a prolonged exile will have a similar effect…”

“That’s the hope. So this is my patient, eh? Your Highness,” he said with another cursory bow toward Zuko.

Zuko gave him a haughty glare in return. “And your commanding officer.”

“You’re only my commanding officer when you’re not my patient.”

“I don’t think that’s how rank works,” Zuko said coldly.

“In the Navy, it is. I may have been a lowly lieutenant, but in my infirmary, an admiral had to follow _my_ orders.”

“In the Army, too,” Iroh confirmed. Zuko gave him a betrayed look, and Iroh shrugged apologetically.

“Now, let’s see what the damage is,” (ex-)Lieutenant Tulang said briskly, and walked back through the doorway from the break room to the infirmary proper.

“He means for you to follow him, Your Highness,” Riu said to Zuko. His tone was mild, and somewhere between apologetic and exasperated.

“That is not how one usually asks _royalty_ to do something,” Zuko said through gritted teeth. He had the air of a cat with all its fur standing on end, not yet hissing but growling warningly.

“After forty years in the Navy, he no longer has reverence for man or spirit,” Riu said carefully.

“Diagnosis requires a patient,” came Tulang’s voice from the other room.

“Or as the kids would say, he’s run out of fucks to give,” Mawar said dryly.

“Or that,” Riu agreed.

Zuko stood up with a frustrated growl in his throat and went into the infirmary. Riu followed him, as did his assistants (to assist, or out of morbid curiosity?), so Iroh thought he might as well go with them.

“Sit,” said Tulang, pointing to the mats beside the futon Zuko had been in for days. Zuko gave him that haughty glare again—another very cat-like expression: _I’m doing this because I want to, not because you told me to_ —and sat _seiza_.

Zuko’s back was straight as a military cadet’s on the parade ground, his gaze stony and stoic, as Tulang knelt beside him and untied the fabric fastening the bandage on, holding the pad of gauze in place as he did, then gingerly pulled it away from Zuko’s face. The boy’s jaw tightened, all his muscles tensed, he sat up even straighter if that was possible, but he made no sound of pain.

Tulang did not gasp in horror or hiss in sympathy when he saw the ruin that was the left side of Zuko’s face. Either Riu had told him what to expect, or his experience in the Navy had prepared him to see wounds like this, and worse—and disciplined him not to betray to his patients the direness of their condition. As Mawar had said, the knowledge of danger could make the danger worse.

Mawar and Sung Hyun were quietly getting supplies out of cabinets. Tulang didn’t comment on that, either. He moistened a piece of gauze to gently clear excess fluid and carefully examined the healing wounds. “Not as bad as it could be,” he allowed. “You’ve done good work,” he said with a nod toward Riu.

“Thank you, Sifu Doctor,” Riu said with a half-serious bow.

Tulang reached into a black leather bag he had brought with him and took out a small clay jar full of a white paste that he applied in a thin layer to the wounds. It seemed to have none of the soothing effects of the burn ointment that the doctors usually used, because instead of sighing with relief or allowing his posture to relax, Zuko squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw harder.

“What is that?” Riu asked, leaning in to get a better look at the substance.

“In the southeastern Earth Kingdom, they call it _pushpanjan_. It seems to hold in moisture and prevent infection.”

“And you use that instead of the usual burn ointment?”

“As a supplement. Can’t be too careful.”

“How can I get some of that?” Riu asked eagerly. “To test it out, run experiments…”

“You can’t. All of it that the Fire Nation can get its hands on is reserved for the military.”

“But surely for the _palace_ …”

“You think the Fire Lord would want any of this diverted from his war to treat guards and servants?” Tulang said in a bitter deadpan. _Or disobedient sons who are to be ‘taught respect’ through pain and disfigurement?_ Iroh silently added.

“Then how do you still have any?” Riu wanted to know.

“I took an unauthorized souvenir. Thought it might come in handy someday. Turns out I was right.”

Tulang applied another layer of the honey-and-herb concoction that Riu had been using. The attention of the room was briefly diverted by Ohta and Shun arriving for the day shift, but Tulang barely spared a glance for the disturbance while he worked. He folded several layers of gauze into a pad for Zuko’s face, carefully placed it over the area where the wounds were still open, and brusquely instructed his patient, “Hold that.”

“I can help,” Mawar offered, stepping forward (and ignoring the fact that she was no longer officially on duty).

“Nah,” Tulang said, already retying the fabric that secured the bandage in place. “On a small ship, I’m used to working without assistants.”

“The ship’s present commanding officer, Lieutenant Jee, informed me that there is a doctor on board,” Iroh offered. “Though he warned that the doctor is… inexperienced.”

“Frankly, I’d rather have no assistant than an incompetent one.”

“I like to think that I am reasonably competent,” Shun said, quietly but firmly, from where she and Ohta stood, still close to the door.

Tulang looked up at her sharply—and so did Zuko. “Are you coming?” the old doctor asked.

“If you’ll have me.”

Tulang looked over at Riu, eyebrows raised. “Shun is more than competent,” Riu said warmly. “She has a gift. And I daresay her bedside manner is an improvement over yours.”

Tulang barked out a short laugh at that last comment. “Sleazy standard of comparison, as they say in the Navy. Well, it’s up to you, General,” he said to Iroh.

“No, it is up to the commanding officer,” Iroh corrected him, and looked back toward Zuko.

Zuko stood up, assuming his command. Shun bowed to him and said, “I know you will not always need medical care, Your Highness, but I can learn to be a sailor. I learn quickly. I can cook, I can clean, I can care for the messenger hawks…”

“You are welcome aboard my ship, Crewwoman Shun,” said Zuko with a slight bow of respect from a commander to a worthy subordinate.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” she said, bowing lower in gratitude.

It was, of course, Zuko’s decision, but Iroh brought a different perspective to the matter. “Have your parents given their blessing to your plans to go seafaring?” As a legal adult, she could make her own decisions, but parents did not stop fearing for their children or grieving their absence when they turned eighteen (how well he knew).

“They are not happy that I must leave… but I explained to them that I feel it as a calling. From where, I do not know; perhaps from Agni, if I may presume to imagine that He would speak to someone like me.”

“Agni hears all His children,” Iroh said—a reflexive recitation of a platitude of priests and Fire Sages, but as the words left his mouth, he found himself believing them with more certainty than he ever had. “Why should He not speak to any of them, regardless of station?”

Shun bowed her head gratefully. Tulang raised his eyebrows skeptically; Riu’s brow was furrowed; Mawar’s lips were pressed together; Ohta’s face was studiedly neutral. Men and women of science, who had little time for spirit nonsense, who no doubt spoke the ritual prayers to Agni mechanically and only when expected to, if they spoke them at all. Iroh did not blame them, nor did he pity them. They made the best judgment they could from their experience of the world, as did he.

Servants were sent to collect Zuko’s and Iroh’s belongings from their quarters and summoned to gather the stock of medical supplies—bandages, ointment, pain treatments, a few spare tools—that Riu was happy to part with for Zuko’s sake. Shun went to gather her own small bundle of possessions and say farewell again to her parents; Tulang insisted that he could carry his own damn bags from Riu’s residence elsewhere in the palace.

Zuko and Iroh bade their grateful farewells to Riu and the three assistants who were staying, and Iroh sent his fond regards to Yi Min. Zuko ran his hand over his pink hairless scalp with a tiny crooked smile as he gave his thanks to Sung Hyun, and the young man returned his smile with more boldness than Iroh had yet seen from him. Mawar, never shy, lightly squeezed Zuko’s shoulder, silently wishing him strength, after her formal bow of farewell; Ohta, emboldened by her example, laid a softer hand on his shoulder. Riu had to wipe off his misted glasses with a corner of his sleeve before he wished Zuko swift healing, good health, and good fortune in his travels (though he did not say ‘in his search’).

Zuko could not say goodbye to his father and sister before he departed in ignominy, but Iroh did not know whether he would have wished to; Iroh certainly thought it was for the best. The banished prince, his self-exiled uncle, and their medical attendants rode down the crooked road from the Caldera to the harbor in a rhinoceros-pulled carriage, followed by another cart lightly loaded with their things.

Iroh asked the driver to make one stop in the city before they went to the docks. He went back to his favorite music shop and announced a change of plans: he would pick up the flute he had purchased yesterday instead of having it delivered to the palace tomorrow. He returned to the carriage with a long box tucked under his arm and, once back inside, presented it to Shun with a seated bow. She took it and opened it with a mystified expression that turned to awe and disbelief when she saw what was inside.

“This is— this is too much, Your Highness,” she stammered, running careful, trembling fingers over the polished wood.

“For my nephew’s life, there is no such thing as ‘too much.’” At that, Zuko looked down, embarrassed.

“But I don’t even know how to play!”

“I’m told you learn quickly,” Tulang remarked, beating Iroh to the punch.

“I have brought my liuqin and my tsungi horn,” Iroh said, and Zuko put a hand over the right side of his face and groaned. “I look forward to our duets, once you have mastered your instrument. Perhaps even ensembles, if any of the crew are musical! And Zuko is a talented tsungi horn player, though he would be quite a bit better if he ever practiced…”

“Uncle, _please_ …”

When they arrived at the docks, the _Wani_ was bustling with crewmembers preparing to sail—stowing away supplies, shoveling coal into the engines, herding a balking komodo-rhino through a door into a lower-level compartment.

Lieutenant Jee spotted the royal carriages, finished shouting an order, and then walked down the gangplank to greet his new passengers and commanders. There were two more passengers than he was expecting; his gaze kept shifting sideways toward them even as he bowed his welcome to Zuko and Iroh.

“This is Doctor Tulang and his assistant and woman-of-all-work, Shun. They will be in charge of Prince Zuko’s medical care while he recovers from his injuries—and of course any illness or injury that may befall the members of the crew.”

“Very good, sir,” Jee said brusquely.

A crewman who was walking by toward the gangplank, hauling a couple of the princes’ bags, overheard and shouted up to the ship as he climbed, “Hey, Dekku! You’re not our doctor anymore!”

“Good!” came a gruff voice from above. “I’m a cook, not a doctor!”

“Yeah, and you’re shit at that too!” said a woman’s voice.

Iroh exchanged a concerned look with Tulang. Zuko gazed ahead stoically.

“Welcome aboard the _Wani_ , Your Highnesses,” Jee said, already sounding tired.

Zuko marched up the gangplank with a look of determination. No doubt he was telling himself that this was only a temporary trial, that he could look forward to the day when he returned home in triumph with the Avatar as his prisoner, his status and honor restored.

Iroh would take each day, each moment, looking forward only to the next. His mission was as clear as Zuko’s: keep him alive, keep him sane, keep him goodhearted. And wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray, prologue *finally* finished! Excited to write the encounter between Zuko and Vaatu...
> 
> I'm borrowing the ship name and most of the crew members from MuffinLance, because once I'm using her AU idea, I might as well. (The only one who's been mentioned so far is Assistant Cook Dekku, but the rest will show up in the AU fic proper, though I may change some names so they're not all Japanese.) Inventing OCs is hard, yo. I didn't originally intend for Shun to come along, but I didn't want *all* of my OC building to be left behind in the prologue, and I decided I liked her.
> 
> From the Wikipedia article on zinc oxide: "The use of _pushpanjan_ , probably zinc oxide, as a salve for eyes and open wounds, is mentioned in the Indian medical text the _Charaka Samhita_ , thought to date from 500 BC or before." I stumbled across this tidbit when I was looking up something else and just couldn't let it go to waste.


End file.
